Abstract
This article explores differences in the development of nuclear energy programs in France and Germany. Despite many similarities in natural resource availability and energy consumption, France and Germany differ significantly in their approaches to nuclear power. France treats nuclear energy as a primary power source; Germany relies much more on coal and other fossil fuels. This article argues that the difference in energy programs is best explained by differences in political opportunity structure and especially different institutional structures in the two countries. French views on nationalism and technology also have contributed to the higher use of nuclear power in that country.
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Notes
France is currently the world's second largest producer of nuclear power; Germany is the sixth. Nuclear Energy Institute, “World Statistics,” http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/worldstatistics/.
Frank Brachvogel, “Die Verantwortung wächst,” bdew. http://www.bdew.de/internet.nsf/id/DE_20111216-PI-Die-Verantwortung-waechst?open&ccm=900010020010}.
Although the decision was reinforced by the Japan disaster, Germany's planned phase-out was initiated by a governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens in 2000.
Sarah Elise Wiliarty,“Gender and Energy Policy Making under the First Merkel Government,” German Politics 20/3 (2011): 449–63; Michael Pahle, “Germany's Dash for Coal: Exploring Drivers and Factors,” Energy Policy 38 (2010): 3431–42.
Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Pollak, The Atom Besieged: Extraparliamentary Dissent in France and Germany (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981), 12.
Daniel P. Aldrich, Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), 171.
E.H. Boyle, “Political Frames and Legal Activity: The Case of Nuclear Power in Four Countries,” Law & Society Review 32 (1998): 155.
Aldrich, Site Fights.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 14.
The Eurobarometer is a series of public-opinion surveys conducted by the European Commission. European Commission, Europeans and Nuclear Safety (Brussels, Belgium: European Commission, 2010).
Even though public opinion seems to have been similar in France and Germany, government actions have sometimes differed. Following the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union, for example, children on the German side of the Rhine river were not allowed to play in the grass, and the government destroyed some food crops that were assumed to be contaminated. On the French side, children played where they liked, and exposed food was regarded as harmless. Ruud Koopmans and Jan Willem Duyvendak, “The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-nuclear Movements in Western Europe,” Social Problems 42 (1995): 238.
It should be noted that this survey was conducted just prior to the Fukushima disaster.
On the development of the concept of political opportunity structures, see David S. Meyer, “Protest and Political Opportunities,” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 125–45. For a review of the social movement literature, see Herbert P. Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-nuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 57–85. There is a large literature on political opportunity structures. For examples, see Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995); Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Anne N. Costain, Inviting Women's Rebellion: A Political Process Interpretation of the Women's Movement (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Christian Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy: A Comparison of Germany and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Doug McAdam, “Political Opportunities: Conceptual Origins, Current Problems, Future Directions,” in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, ed. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 23–40.
Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest,” 60–61. Joppke makes a similar argument when comparing West Germany and the United States: Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy.
Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest,” 61.
Ibid., 75–76.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 40–43.
Ibid., 43–46.
Ibid., 57; Aldrich, Site Fights.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 58–60.
Aldrich, Site Fights, 162–69.
Ibid., 73; Boyle, “Political Frames and Legal Activity,” 155.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 73.
Ibid., 60–61.
Peter Wagner, “Contesting Policies and Redefining the State: Energy Policy-Making and the Anti-Nuclear Movement in West Germany,” in States and Anti-Nuclear Movements, ed. Helena Flam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 271.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 63.
Nelkin and Pollak, 67.
Joppke compares the West German anti-nuclear movement with the movement in the United States. Interestingly, from his perspective, the West German movement is more radical and the West German state is more closed to influence from citizen activists. Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 63–70.
Ibid., 158.
Boyle, “Political Frames and Legal Activity,” 159.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 159.
Boyle, “Political Frames and Legal Activity,” 159.
Ibid.; Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 163–66.
Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, 80–81.
Ibid., 81.
For more on the development of the German Green party and its relationship to the Social Democrats, see Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski, The German Left: Red, Green, and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Joppke's comparison with the United States also highlights the difficulties of a Green Party getting off the ground in a different political system. Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy.
Tarrow, Power in Movement.
Aldrich, Site Fights.
Jae-Jae Spoon, “Holding Their Own: Explaining the Persistence of Green Parties in France and the UK,” Party Politics 15 (2009), 619.
Ibid., European Green Party, ‘Les Verts—France’, European Green Party, http://www.eurogreens.org/cms/default/dok/148/148640.france@en.htm.
Spoon, “Holding Their Own,” 619.
In 1990 the German Greens slipped below the 5 percent threshold but they were able to remain in parliament because of their electoral alliance with Alliance ’90, a group of civil rights activists in East Germany. The two groups have since merged, and their official name is Alliance ’90/The Greens.
Jon Burchell, The Evolution of Green Politics: Development and Change within European Green Parties (London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2002).
Wolfgang Rüdig, “Germany”, Environmental Politics 11 (2002): 96–98.
Wiliarty, “Gender and Energy Policy Making under the First Merkel Government”; Rüdiger K. W. Wurzel, “Environmental, Climate, and Energy Policies: Path-Dependent Incrementalism or Quantum Leap?,” German Politics 19/3–4 (2011): 460–78.
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009).
Ibid., 94.
Ibid., 93.
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The author would like to thank Nancy Schwartz for organizing this symposium, and thank her and the editors of Polity for their helpful feedback on this article.
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Wiliarty, S. Nuclear Power in Germany and France. Polity 45, 281–296 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2013.9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2013.9