Politics and administration during a ‘nuclear-political’ crisis

How do public agencies and goverments cope with large-scale hazards if they cannot rely on specific laws, previous experience or governmental directions. National and local authorities in West Germany were completely surprised by nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl reactor blaze in 1986. This article describes and analyzes local, regional and national administrative reactions. Attempts by local and state administrators to preserve their freedom of action were confronted with national-level attempts to centralize and coordinate crisis decision making. Many local and regional bodies had to cope with citizen protests and attempts at self-regulation organized by autonomous radiological experts and amplified by the mass media. There was a marked lack of uniformity in government responses to the crisis. This was only in part due to the pervasive uncertainty and the lack of preparedness. Problems of inter-administrative coordination always occur when decentralized political responsibilities meet with geographically extensive threats.The paper is commented on by Klaus König, professor of Government and former advisor to the West German chancellor.