Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T18:54:28.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Four theories of public policy making and fast breeder reactor development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Get access

Extract

The recent revival of the discipline of political economy challenges purely economic explanations of economic growth, technological innovation, and sectoral change. This approach recognizes that political actors, institutions, and strategies to organize the economic process together shape the economic development of industrial societies. Whereas economists have emphasized determinants of growth such as savings and investment rates, degrees of domestic and international competition in an industry, or the supply of labor, the new political economists view the political definition of property rights, the nature of state intervention in the economy, the resources of politically mobilized groups, and political actors' belief systems as critical determinants of economic transformations. Both economists and political economists, however, share the assumption that actors are rational; they pursue their interests in a calculated manner within a given system of institutional constraints.

Type
National Energy Policies
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. For a sophisticated historical reconstruction of economic and political development, see North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981).Google Scholar

2. In this vein Gourevitch, Peter A. in “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978), pp. 881911CrossRefGoogle Scholar, links international systems and domestic coalition arguments. Several authors have attempted to combine domestic structure and political coalition theories; see, for example, Katzenstein, Peter J., “Conclusion: Domestic Structures and Strategies of Foreign Economic Policy,” in Katzenstein, . ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Castles, Francis G., ed., The Impact of Parties (Beverly Hills: Sage. 1982)Google Scholar; Zysman, John, Government, Markets, and Growth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Hall, Peter A., “Patterns of Economic Policy: An Organizational Approach,” in Bornstein, Stephen, Held, David, and Krieger, Joel, eds., The State in Capitalist Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984).Google Scholar

3. Cf., as a good critique, Greenberg, George D., Miller, Jeffrey A., Mohr, Lawrence R., and Vladeck, Bruce C., “Developing Public Policy Theory: Perspectives from Empirical Research,” American Political Science Review 71 (12 1977), pp. 1532–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Studies of economic policy making often do not clearly distinguish output variables such as tax policies and welfare expenditures from policy outcome variables such as employment, inflation, and economic growth. The problem can be seen in Schmidt, Manfred, Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik unter bürgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen (Frankfurt: Campus, 1982), pp. 121–23.Google Scholar

4. In social theory this issue has been critically analyzed by Giddens, Anthony, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), especially pp. 202–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Only a few authors have conceptualized a historically changing structure of public policy making. See, for example, Heisler, Martin O. and Peters, B. Guy, “Comparing Social Policy across Levels of Government, Countries, and Time: Belgium and Sweden since 1870,” in Ashford, Douglas, ed., Comparing Public Policies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978)Google Scholar; Flora, Peter and Alber, Jens, “Modernization, Democratization, and the Development of Welfare States in Western Europe,” in Flora, and Heidenheimer, Arnold, eds., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1981)Google Scholar; and Schmidt, Manfred G., “The Role of Parties in Shaping Macro-Economic Policy,”Google Scholar in Castles, , Impact of Parties.Google Scholar

6. For a closer investigation of FBR policies in the context of the overall energy policies of the three countries, see Kitschelt, Herbert, Politik und Energie (Frankfurt: Campus, 1983), chaps. 35.Google Scholar

7. See O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Offe, Claus, “‘Krisen des Krisenmanagements’: Elemente einer politischen Krisentheorie,” in Jänicke, Martin, ed., Herrschaft und Krise (Opladen: Westdcutscher, 1973).Google Scholar

8. See Offe, Claus, “Rationalitätskriterien und Funktionsprobleme politisch-administrativen Handeins,” Leviathan 2, 3 (1974), pp. 333–45.Google Scholar

9. Linking Marxist political theory to organization theory is Therborn, Goran, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London: NLB, 1978).Google Scholar

10. Compare Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: NLB, 1973)Google Scholar, and Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: NLB, 1975).Google Scholar

11. See Esping-Anderson, Gösta, Friedland, Roger, and Wright, Erik Olin, “Modes of Class Struggle and the Capitalist State,” Kapilalistate 4/5 (1976), pp. 186220.Google Scholar

12. Wilson, James Q., Political Organization (New York: Basic, 1979), chap. 16.Google Scholar

13. Lowi, Theodore, “American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory,” World Politics 16 (07 1964), pp. 677715CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lowi, , “Four Systems of Policy Politics and Choice,” Public Administration Review 32 (0708 1972), pp. 298310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. See Lowi, Theodore, “The State in Politics: An Inquiry into the Relation between Policy and Administration” (ms., Cornell University, 1982), p. 11Google Scholar. In this more recent formulation. Lowi's approach is no longer far removed from another statist policy theory that uses properties of decision processes to predict the nature of political actors, conflicts, and outcomes: Steiner, Jürg, “Decision Process and Policy Outcome: An Attempt to Conceptualize the Problem at the Cross-National Level,” European Journal of Political Research 11 (09 1983), pp. 309–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. In a sense Lowi has thus confirmed the criticism made by discussants of his earlier work that–contrary to the statement “policy determines politics–the “policy type is rather an explanandum than an explanans of public policy.” See Greenberg, et al. , “Developing Public Policy Theory,” p. 1542.Google Scholar

16. Lowi, , “The State in Politics,” p. 11.Google Scholar

17. This subjectivist turn has been advocated by Steinberger, Peter, “Typologies of Public Policy: Meaning Construction and the Policy Process,” Social Science Quarterly 61 (09 1980), pp. 185–97.Google Scholar

18. This argument is developed in Ashford, Douglas E., “The Structural Analysis of Policy or Institutions Really Do Matter,”Google Scholar in Ashford, , Comparing Public Policies.Google Scholar

19. The analysis of national policy styles is attempted in Richardson, Jeremy, ed., Policy Styles in Western Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982).Google Scholar

20. The definition of domestic structures and international regime structures rests on similar methodological and conceptual choices. For a definition of international regimes along lines similar to the definition of domestic structures see Krasner, Stephen D., “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 185205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. For the growing literature on state-society relations in capitalist democracies, see Berger, Suzanne, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, and Lehmbruch, Gerhard and Schmitter, Philippe, eds., Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982).Google Scholar

22. See for instance Krasner, Stephen, Defending the National Interest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), chap. 3Google Scholar. A combination of interest intermediation and state capacities is attempted in Katzenstein, , “Conclusion: Domestic Structures.”Google Scholar

23. Criticisms of this perspective have been advanced from other public policy theories. For issue-based approaches see Steiner, , “Decision Process and Policy Outcome,” pp. 310–11Google Scholar, and Zysman, . Governments, Markets and Growth, p. 297Google Scholar. From the perspective of international systems and political coalition theories, see Gourevitch, , “Second Image Reversed,” p. 301Google Scholar, and Zysman, , Governments, Markets and Growth, pp. 347–49.Google Scholar

24. Coalition theories are developed in Gourevitch, Peter A., “International Trade, Domestic Coalitions, and Liberty: Comparative Responses to the Great Depression of 1873–1896,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (08 1977), pp. 281313CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gourevitch, , “Breaking with Orthodoxy: The Politics of Economic Policy Responses to the Depression of the 1930s,” International Organization 38 (Winter 1984), pp. 95129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Esping-Anderson, Gösta and Friedland, Roger, “Class Coalitions in the Making of West European Economies,” Political Power and Social Theory 3 (1982), pp. 150.Google Scholar

25. In this vein coalition theories have often blended a Marxist, economy-based conception of politics with a pluralist, group-based vision of the political process. Recent reformulations of pluralism by Dahl and Lindblom have come rather close to a similar conceptualization of politics in capitalist democracies. For a critique see Manley, John F., “Neo-Pluralism: A Class Analysis of Pluralism I and Pluralism II,” American Political Science Review 77 (06 1983), pp. 368–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. See, for example, Castles, Francis G., The Social Democratic Image of Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978)Google Scholar; Cameron, David R., “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 72 (12 1978), pp. 1243–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hibbs, Douglas A., “Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy,” American Political Science Review 71 (12 1977), pp. 1467–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. See Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar, and, critically, Keohane, Robert O., “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Finifter, Ada, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: APSA, 1983).Google Scholar

28. In the limitational case that a subset of actors constitutes a “privileged group,” whose benefits from supplying the collective good are higher than its goods, this privileged group will supply the entire collective good. See Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

29. In this sense the openness of economies to world markets has been suggested as a constraint on domestic policy making. For example, see Cameron, , “Expansion of the Public Economy.”Google Scholar

30. See Kurth, James R., “Industrial Change and Political Change: A European Perspective,” in Collier, David, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

31. See Gilpin, Robert, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. For debate on this point see Krasner, , Defending the National Interest, pp. 3543Google Scholar, and, critically, Keohane, , “Theory of World Politics,” p. 521.Google Scholar

33. For a historical critique of Waltz's theory see Ruggie, John Gerard, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 35 (01 1983), pp. 261–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Efforts to test the relative explanatory power of “realist” and “complex interdependence” views of international politics can be found in Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).Google Scholar

35. This limitation applies to most of the literature referred to in fn. 2. It is also highlighted by Alford's, Robert seminal “Paradigms of State and Civil Society Relations,”Google Scholar in Lindberg, Leon N., Alford, Robert R., Crouch, Cohn, and Offe, Claus, Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975)Google Scholar. First, Alford's recommendation to use class, elite, and pluralist arguments in a layered analysis of policy making omits “institutionalist” approaches (regime theory), while the methodological similarity of elite and pluralist analysis may warrant treating them both as variations of coalition theory. Second, his essay sheds little light on the conceptualization of policy itself. For a sophisticated empirical application of Alford's framework see Whitt, J. Allen, “Toward A Class-Dialectical Model of Power. An Empirical Assessment of Three Competing Models of Political Power,” American Sociological Review 44 (02 1979), pp. 8199CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Given that Whitt studies referenda decisions about public transportation projects in just one setting, California, structural-institutional impacts on policy making cannot be analyzed well. Moreover, the analysis tends to focus on groups and decisional outcomes while neglecting an explanation for the shaping of the policy arenas or the choice of policy instruments. This is unfortunate, because the conditions that lead to the choice of the policy instruments, e.g., the financing schemes for public rail systems, could be a serious contender to his own preferred explanation of referenda outcomes, the mobilization of class (factions)– unless he were prepared to argue that these choices merely reflected class interests.

36. The market failure argument for government intervention in FBR policy has been challenged by Keck, Otto, Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program: The Case of the West German Fast Breeder Reactor (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1981), chap. 1Google Scholar. Keck points to large private investment efforts, for example in the computer industry, but he overlooks the fact that the breeder reactor is only one part of an extremely complex nuclear fuel cycle. Moreover, the institutional uncertainties of breeder development, due to its military sensitivity as well as its extraordinary hazard potential, are unmatched in the history of industrial innovation.

37. For budget data see Chow, Brian, The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor: An Economic Analysis (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), p. 13Google Scholar. In the 1960s the LMFBR budget grew mostly at the expense of other advanced reactor technologies. Only between 1970 and 1976 did annual budget allocations for the LMFBR skyrocket, from about $100 million to about $650 million.

38. The spreading of West German development funds over several reactor lines is documented by Keck, , Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, p. 73.Google Scholar

39. For the controversy about the end of the French gas-cooled reactor see Colon, Jean-Marie, Le nucléaire sans les français. Qui décide? Qui prfite? (Paris: Maspero, 1977)Google Scholar, and Bupp, Irwin C. and Derian, Jean-Claude, Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved (New York: Basic, 1978), p. 62.Google Scholar

40. The public vs. private power debate is discussed in Wildavsky, Aaron, Dixon-Yates: A Study in Power Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, and Green, Harold p. and Rosenthal, Alan, Government of the Atom (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).Google Scholar

41. To keep military options open, West Germany might have favored the heavy-water reactor technology during the 1950s. See Radkau, Joachim, “National politische Dimensionen der Schwerwasser-Reaktorlinie in den Antängen der bundesdeutschen Kernenergieentwicklung,” Technikgeschichte 45 (Autumn 1978), pp. 229–56.Google Scholar

42. The environmental conflict about the FERMI-reactor is discussed in Fuller, John G., We Almost Lost Detroit (New York: Random, 1975).Google Scholar

43. For the calculation of reactor development strategies in France see Andriot, J. with Gaussens, J., Economie et perspectives de l'énergie atomique (Paris: Dunod, 1964)Google Scholar; for the United States see U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Potential Nuclear Power Growth Patterns (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1970)Google Scholar; and for West Germany, Häfele, Wolf and Krämer, Helmut, Technischer und wirtschafilicher Stand sowie Aussichten der Kernenergie in der Kraftwirtschaft der Bundesrepublik (Karlsruhe: GfK/KFA, 1971).Google Scholar

44. A detailed analysis of the navy reactor program can be found in Hewlett, Richard G. and Duncan, Francis, Nuclear Navy, 1946–1962 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).Google Scholar

45. For the U.S. breeder program in the 1960s see Stiefel, Michael D., “Government Commercialization of Large Scale Technology: The U.S. Breeder Reactor Program, 1964–1976” (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 06 1981).Google Scholar

46. A good account of the controversy about leadership in the German FBR program is Keck, , Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, pp. 67ff., 80ff.Google Scholar

47. The conflict about the choice of FBR technologies in West Germany is discussed in numerous contributions to Atomwirtschaft-Atomtechnik 14 (April 1969).

48. For the conflict between scientists and engineers-administrators in the early development of the French CEA, see Scheinman, Lawrence, Atomic Energy Policy in France under the Fourth Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1965)Google Scholar, and Weart, Spencer R.. Scientists in Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

49. For the French choice of reactor technology, see CEA, Rapport annuel (Paris, 1962), p. 118.Google Scholar

50. Cf. Arndt, Hans-Joachim, West Germany: Politics of Non-Planning (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

51. See Pavitt, Keith, “Government Support for Industrial Research and Development in France: Theory and Practice,” Minerva 14 (Autumn 1976), pp. 330–54Google Scholar, and Zysman, John, “The French State in the International Economy,”Google Scholar in Katzenstein, , Between Power and Plenty.Google Scholar

52. Krasner, , Defending the National Interest, chap. 3.Google Scholar

53. Documents of the “project definition” phase in the LMFBR program are published in the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, LMFBR Demonstration Plant Program: Proceedings of the Senior Utility Steering Committee and of the Senior Utility Technical Advisory Committee (Washington, D.C., 1972).Google Scholar

54. Changes in the FBR project management were discussed by the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, Fast Breeder Reactor Program (Washington, D.C., 1975), pp. 2273ff.Google Scholar: see also U.S. General Accounting Office, The LMFBR Program: Past, Present, and Future (Washington, D.C., 04 1975).Google Scholar

55. Keck, , Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, pp. 148–50Google Scholar, praises the economizing spirit of the utilities. But these savings might have been erased by project delays due to the lengthy negotiations.

56. The Phénix project is described in Vendryés, G. et al. , “Situation et perspectives de la filière de réacteurs à neutrons rapides en France,”Google Scholar in United Nations and International Energy Authority, Fourth International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, vol. 5 (Geneva, 1971).Google Scholar

57. U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency, Energy Policies in the European Community (Washington, D.C., 1975), p. 132Google Scholar, estimates the price of the Phénix reactor at about $530 million.

58. Although some authors have claimed a continuing concern with energy security in French policy since the 1920s, public documents show that such worries had subsided in the 1960s and early 1970s and that a further rise in oil imports was no longer considered undesirable. See Commissariat Générale du Plan, Plan et prospectives: l'énergie (Paris: Colin, 1972).Google Scholar

59. Cooperation in the French and West German FBR programs soon gave way to intense competition; cf. Nau, Henry, National Policy and International Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), chap. 8.Google Scholar

60. Note, for instance, the loss of three to four years in the West German and U.S. FBR demonstration projects relative to the French effort. These delays were due entirely to institutional difficulties of the development program.

61. For a broader discussion of these movements see Kitschelt, Herbert, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Countries,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (Winter 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “New Social Movements in the United States and West Germany,” Political Power and Social Theory 5 (1985).Google Scholar

62. Cochran, Thomas B., The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor: An Environmental and Economic Critique (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

63. See Lovins, Amory B., Soft Energy Paths (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977)Google Scholar, and Jungk, Robert, Der Aromstaat (Munich: Kindler, 1978).Google Scholar

64. See Kitschelt, , “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest.”Google Scholar

65. For the politicization of the breeder demonstration reactor in West Germany see Kitschelt, Herbert, Kernenergiepolitik: Arena eines gesellschaftlichen Konflikts (Frankfurt: Campus, 1980). chap. 5.Google Scholar

66. French antinuclear opposition is reviewed in Fagnani, Francis and Nicolon, Alexandre, Nucléopolis: materiaux pour l'analyse d'une société nucléaire (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1979)Google Scholar, and most recently in Chafer, Tony, “The Anti-Nuclear Movement and the Rise of Political Ecology,” in Cerny, Philip G., ed., Social Movements and Protest in France (New York: St. Martin's, 1982).Google Scholar

67. In West Germany agreements in April 1983 increased the utilities' and the reactor manufacturers' shares of the FBR demonstration reactor's cost to DM 1.42 billion, or 22% of the project costs (Nuclear Engineering International, 28 June 1983, p. 3Google Scholar). Similar arrangements were aired during 1983 in the United States, but Congress terminated funding before they could bear fruit.

68. Cf. Bundesregierung, , Deutschland, Bundesrepublik, I. Fortschreibung des Energieprogramms (Bonn: Bundestags-Drucksache VII/2713, 1974)Google Scholar; U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency, A National Plan for Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration (Washington, D.C., 1975)Google Scholar; Commissariat Générale du Plan, Rapport de la commission de l'énergie sur les orientations de la politique énergetique (Paris: Ministère de l'Industrie, 1975).Google Scholar

69. For the reorganization of the French nuclear industry see Gaussens, Jacques, “Création d'une industrie nucléaire et arboriculture,” Revue de l'énergie 30 (0809 1979), pp. 597617.Google Scholar

70. See, for instance, the testimony of an EPA representative in the hearings of U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Fast Breeder Reactor Program, p. 334.Google Scholar

71. This analysis is based on Williams, Richard L., “The Need for Energy vs. the Danger of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: President Carter's Decision on the Clinch River Plutonium Breeder” (Ms., National War College, Washington, D.C., 1978).Google Scholar

72. In 1975 the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency solicited a critical report on the proliferation impacts of FBR fuel cycles by Wohlstetter, Albert et al. , Swords from Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Influential during the Carter administration was a report by a Ford Foundation energy project under direction of Keeney, Spurgeon M., Nuclear Power: Issues and Choices (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1979)Google Scholar, with conclusions critical of the FBR project.

73. The difficulties of integrating the nuclear issue into the established cleavage structures of political parties are described in Nelkin, Dorothy and Pollack, Michael, “The Political Parties and the Nuclear Energy Debate in France and Germany,” Comparative Politics 12 (01 1980), pp. 127–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. See Bundestag, Deutscher, Enquete-Kommission, “Zukünftige Kernenergiepolitik,” Zwischenbericht (Bonn: Bundestags-Drucksache VIII/4341, 1980).Google Scholar

75. Cf. the foreword by Mitterrand, François to Bauer, Etienne et al. , Pour une autre politique nucléaire: rapport du comité nucléaire environment et société du parti socialist (Paris: Flammarion, 1978).Google Scholar

76. This is not meant to suggest a monocausal explanation of the rise of ecological parties in Western Europe. See Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand, “Ecology Parties in Western Europe,” West European Politics 5 (01 1982), pp. 6875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77. For France see Suleiman, Ezra, Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; for Germany, West, Mayntz, Renate and Scharpf, Fritz, Policy-Making in the German Federal Bureaucracy (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1975).Google Scholar

78. For a comparison of U.S. and French nuclear licensing procedures see Golay, Michael W., Saragossi, Iri, and Willefest, Jean-Marc, Comparative Analysis of U.S. and French Nuclear Power Plant Siting and Construction: Regulatory Policies and Their Economic Consequences (Cambridge: MIT Energy Laboratory Report, 1977)Google Scholar. For the West German licensing process see Kitschelt, , Kernenergiepolitik, chap. 4.Google Scholar

79. Traube, Klaus, “Internationale Brutreaktor-Entwicklung,” Atomwirtschaft-Atomtechnik 21 (0910 1976), pp. 471–79Google Scholar; Brandstetter, Alois, “Stand der Schnellbrüterentwicklung,” Atomwirtschaft-Atomtechnik 22 (09 1979), pp. 477–83.Google Scholar

80. Critiques of “co-optation” theories of industrial regulation are elaborated in Wilson, James Q., ed., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic, 1980).Google Scholar

81. Rappin, M., “Dezentralisierung des französischen Genehmigungsverfahrens,” Atomwirtschaft-Atomlechnik 27 (01 1982), pp. 7981.Google Scholar

82. Nuclear News 22 (August 1979), pp. 5253.Google Scholar

83. For the development of the Super-Phénix project see Friedlander, Gordon, “Breeder Progress Shifts Overseas,” Electrical World 194 (07 1980), pp. 108–17Google Scholar; Zaleski, C. Pierre, “Breeder Reactors in France,” Science 208 (11 04 1980), pp. 137–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

84. In addition to references in fn. 72 see for an explanation of the Carter policy Nye, Joseph S., “Nonproliferation: A Long-Term Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 56 (04 1978), pp. 601–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

85. Institutional problems of the nuclear fuel cycle are discussed in Rochlin, Gene, Plutonium, Power and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).Google Scholar

86. The official French perspective is explained in Barré, B., “The Proliferation Aspects of Breeder Development,” in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (London: Francis & Taylor, 1979).Google Scholar

87. See Smith, Gerard and Rathjens, George, “Reassessing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy,” Foreign Affairs 59 (Spring 1981), pp. 875–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88. For this reason, the reconstruction of the conflict as “European energy interests vs. U.S. nonproliferation interests” is, at best, a single facet of the complex disagreements on nuclear nonproliferation strategy. Too narrow, therefore, is the analysis by Lellouche, Pierre, “Breaking the Rules without Quite Stopping the Bomb: European Views,” International Organization 35 (Winter 1981), especially pp. 5253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89. The role of domestic structures in the shaping of political perceptions and conflicts among countries has been analyzed by Neustadt, Richard E., Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

90. Cf. Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, pp. 155–57.Google Scholar

91. Estimates of natural resources are problematic and subject to political bias. Sec, for example, Wildavsky, Aaron and Tenenbaum, Ellen, The Politics of Mistrust (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981)Google Scholar. To interpret the figures presented here in a meaningful way, we have only to assume that the bias in the estimates is the same for all three countries.

92. For the United States see Chow, Brian, “Comparative Economics of the Breeder and Light Water Reactor,” Energy Policy 8 (12 1980), pp. 293307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for France see Finon, Dominique, “Fast Breeder Reactors: The End of a Myth?Energy Policy 10 (12 1982), pp. 305–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for West Germany see Keck, Otto, “The West German Fast Breeder Programme,” Energy Policy 8 (12 1980), pp. 277–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93. Almost annually the Karisruhe Nuclear Research Center revised its estimates of uranium demand in West Germany downward Cf. Hennies, Hans-Henning, Jansen, Peter, and Kessler, G., “A West German Perspective on the Need for the Plutonium Fueled LMFBR,” Nuclear News 22 (08 1979), pp. 6975Google Scholar, and Hennies, et al. , “Die deutsche Brüterentwicklung: Stand und Perspektiven,” Atomwirtschaft-Atomtechnik 26 (03 1981), pp. 151–55.Google Scholar

94. Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie, Zweites Programm Energieforschung und Energietechnologien (Bonn: BMFT, 1982), pp. 26, 130.Google Scholar

95. Cf. Nuclear Engineering International 28 (July 1983), p. 4Google Scholar, and 28 (September 1983), p. 12. The financial problems of the French nuclear program are discussed in Cohen, Stephen, “Informed Bewilderment: French Economic Strategy and the Crisis,” in Cohen, and Gourevitch, Peter A., eds., France in a Troubled World Economy (London: Butterworth, 1982).Google Scholar

96. This issue has recently given rise to frictions between the French and West German FBR communities. While earlier cooperation agreements provided for a joint precommercial reactor project in West Germany, France now prefers international contributions to its own Super-Phénix 2, the design of which is already much further advanced than that of any other project. Cf. Nuclear Engineering International 29 (June 1984), pp. 79.Google Scholar

97. See Keohane, , “Theory of World Politics,” pp. 516, 518, 519.Google Scholar

98. Critical of French industrial policy is Hoffmann, Stanley, “Conclusion: The Impact of the Fifth Republic on France,” in Andrews, William G. and Hoffmann, , eds., The Fifth Republic at Twenty (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), especially pp. 461–63.Google Scholar

99. This argument is elaborated in Krasner, Stephen D., “Review Article: Approaches to the State. Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics 16 (01 1984), pp. 241–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100. See Heclo, Hugh, Modern Social Policy in Britain and Sweden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 304–22.Google Scholar

101. A comparative analysis of the causes of societal stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s can be found in Lutz, Burkhart, Der kurze Traum immerwährender Prosperitäl (Frankfurt: Campus. 1984), especially chaps. 6, 7Google Scholar. Contrasting explanations of the crisis are compared in Kitschelt, Herbert, “Materiale Politisierung der Prodution: Gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen und institutionelle lnnovationen in fortgeschrittenen kapitalistischen Demokratien,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 14, 4 (1985).Google Scholar