Public Opposition To The Siting Of The High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository: The Importance Of Trust

This paper examines several dimensions of public opposition to the proposed siting of the high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. In order to provide a context for the public's views of the repository in metropolitan Clark County, both governmental studies of the repository siting process are analyzed, as well as elements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This analysis suggests that one potentially key component of the public's opposition to the siting, as well as their perceptions of risk of the facility, may be the result of a lack of trust in the Department of Energy. Empirical analysis of survey data collected in Nevada in 1988 confirms the strong relationship between political trust and repository risk perceptions.     

Intergovernmental Complexity in Nuclear Waste Disposal Policy: The Indeterminate Role of Local Government

Local governments play a critical, albeit often overlooked, role in nuclear waste disposal policymaking. The centrality of local governments in the policymaking process rests on the simple fact that impacts will be borne disproportionately by local jurisdictions hosting and immediately adjacent to waste disposal sites. This article focuses on the capacity of local jurisdictions in Southern and rural Nevada to absorb and support an undertaking as large and technically complex as the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. The article also examines the perceptions of local government officials concerning a number of management and policy issues related to the construction and operation of the proposed waste repository.     

Policy Failure and Policy Learning: Examining the Conditions of Learning after Disaster

The policy learning literature indicates that governments can and do learn after a policy failure but not always. The purpose of this study is to examine the conditions under which policy failure leads to policy learning. It asks two questions. First, is policy failure associated with policy learning? Second, if policy is associated with policy learning, does the failure initiate different types of learning? Using the policy failure and learning literatures as an organizing framework, this paper analyzes three comparative cases of policy failure revealed by tornados in Greensburg, Kansas (2007); Joplin, Missouri (2011); and Moore, Oklahoma (2013). It finds that failure of the policy process in agenda setting is associated with instrumental policy learning. It also finds that there are two types of failure of decision making: failure to make a timely decision and failure to make any decision. The two types of decision‐making failure are associated with different types of policy learning. In addition, the contextual factors underpinning the link between policy failure and learning are prior experience with the policy problem and capacity to learn.     

Equality of Status, Inequality of Result: State Power and High-Level Radioactive Waste

American intergovernmental relationships are continually redefinedthrough political processes by which the state and federal governmentsseek to achieve their respective policy goals. Following a summaryof the development of federal policy for the disposal of high-levelradioactive waste (HLW), federal court cases that have resultedfrom the selection of Nevada as the nation's host for a HLWrepository are discussed. The cases raise, in a unique way,questions regarding the equality of states' power in the contextof constitutional principles such as the equal footing doctrine,the privileges and immunity clause, and the Tenth Amendment.Questions are also raised regarding the ability of states tosafeguard their interests in the political arena as describedin Garcia.     

Policy Change,Policy Feedback,and Interest Mobilization: The Politics of Nuclear Waste Management

Many of the leading theories of the policy process are aimed at providing insights into the factors that make policy change more (or less) likely. In general, policy change is seen as a result of shifting dynamics within policy subsystems. However, building on theories of policy feedback and interest mobilization, this article examines whether policy change, apart from being an effect of subsystem dynamics, can be a cause of shifting dynamics as latent actors are motivated to participate in the subsystem as a result of policy change. Two hypotheses regarding post‐policy change mobilization are developed and tested using data on participation in congressional hearings concerning the management of nuclear waste. The findings suggest that policy change can activate latent policy actors, specifically those actors that view themselves as “losing” as a result of the policy change. These results point to the need for scholars to examine the potential impacts of post‐policy change dynamics on policy development.     

从公众话语走向政策话语:一项政策问题建构的话语分析

20世纪60年代以来,后实证主义逐渐兴起并演化成为一种潮流。与实证主义所强调的科学主义和工具理性所不同,后实证主义将价值多元和建构主义引入自己的视域。在这种背景下,话语模式也从以前的"实在论"转向"建构论",它要求人们以一种积极的姿态去感受、认知、体验和创建世界。在"建构论"视角下,公共政策的建构与传统的科学理性主义主导下自上而下的创设有所不同,它本质上是一种自下而上的话语建构过程,因此成为一项理解政策问题建构的新路径。那么,现实世界中公众话语是如何建构成为政策话语的?我们寻访了四个方面的理论线索:存在一个话语能量场、公众话语的演进过程、形成话语联盟以及话语自身的价值追求,在此基础上初步勾勒出政策问题话语建构的分析框架。     

Judicious Incentives: International Public Policy Responses to the Globalization of Environmental Management

Public policymakers and regulators worldwide are grappling with the desire to improve environmental quality through appropriate regulation of business, while also streamlining government. Concurrently, environmentally conscience consumers are calling for improved environmental performance by industry. As a result of these pressures, regulators and lawmakers worldwide are attempting to craft effective policies that create adequate incentives for environmental protection on the part of firms, in the face of decreasing budgets and an increased demand for the use of market‐based incentives. To aid decision makers as they struggle with these concerns, this study provides a detailed case examination of the dilemmas and responses of national‐level regulators as they try to develop appropriate responses to the rise of international and “voluntary” management regimes. To accomplish these goals, this article compares the public policy responses of governments around the world to one such voluntary international environmental regime: ISO 14001. ISO 14001 is a form of industry self‐regulation in response to market forces calling for harmonization in environmental management and as a result of consumer and trade‐partner demands. This study examines the relationships between regulators and the regulated in order to understand if ISO 14001 certified firms are receiving regulatory relief or other forms of public policy/regulatory benefits as a result of their certification. It will also examine the impact that government incentives (or their absence) are having on the certification decisions of firms around the world. This information helps us to begin to understand how the trends toward smaller government and voluntary environmental regimes are affecting one another.     

Policy Diversity and Policy Learning in a Federation: The Case of Australian State Betting Law

A case study of the evolution of gambling laws in Australiais the vehicle for an analysis of changing patterns of diversityand uniformity in state policies. A pattern of diverse responsesto the gambling problem in 1930–1960 is explained as theexpression of distinctive state political and other factors.In accounting for the rapid adoption from 1960 of a uniformpolicy in each of the states, explanations are sought both inthe changing nature of these differences and in the interactiveeffects of membership in a federal polity. Particular attentionis paid to the role of "policy learning" among the states andto the "domino effect" of state-by-state adoptions. It is concludedthat such "federal effects" can account for diversity givingway to uniformity in outputs, and that this uniformity doesnot imply a rejection of underlying rationales for federalism.     

The Failure of Success in Natural Resource Policy: Pacific Salmon Harvest Policy in New York State

Natural resource management policies like the Pacific salmon harvest policy developed by New York State often did not anticipate the extent of social, economic, and ethical concerns that would be generated, largely because the agency concentrated on biological considerations. The number of concerned stakeholders grew in proportion to both the success and failure of the initial policy. Had all participants been equally willing to recognize both the successes and the failures, development of a revised policy through group negotiations may have been possible, resulting in a cooperative mode of decision making. Instead, institutional mechanisms based on legislated process were ultimately the approach chosen for policy revision.     

The Enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982: A Multiple Perspectives Explanation

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) is generally analyzed from the distinct perspective of any given actor involved in the nuclear waste policymaking process. Yet, these perspectives often rest on totally different models of decisionmaking. This article applies a multiple perspective explanation as developed by Allison (1971) and Linstone (1984) to the NWPA and explains policy outcomes by reference to three models of decisionmaking: rational actor, organizational processes and governmental politics. Commonalities and points of disjointure in the three models are highlighted and prospects for future nuclear waste disposal policy development are assessed using an integrated decisionmaking framework.     

State-Federal Diffusion and Policy Learning: From Enterprise Zones to Empowerment Zones

There is little empirical evidence on whether the federal governmentlearns from policy experimentation in the states, the "laboratoriesof democracy. " Interviews with participants involved in formulatingthe federal Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities programoffer evidence of limited policy learning from state enterprisezones. Respondents were aware of general trends and drew a fewgeneral conclusions, rather than borrowing from any particularstate. None of the federal policymakers conducted an activesearch for information about the state zones, but state andfederal organizations served as channels of information aboutthe state programs. This finding suggests that such organizationsassist state-federal diffusion as well as interstate diffusionof policy ideas.     

Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments—From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation

Public policy instrumentation and its choice of tools and modes of operation are treated either as a kind of evidence (governing means making regulations, taxing, entering into contracts, communicating, etc.) or as if the questions it raises (the properties of instruments, justifications for choosing them, their applicability, etc.) are part of a rationality of methods without any autonomous meaning. This paper aims to explain the significance of a political sociology approach to public policy instruments in accounting for processes of public policy change: (1) public policy instrumentation is a major issue in public policy, since it reveals a (fairly explicit) theorization of the relationship between the governing and the governed: every instrument constitutes a condensed form of knowledge about social control and ways of exercising it; and (2) instruments at work are not neutral devices: they produce specific effects, independently of the objective pursued (the aims ascribed to them), which structure public policy according to their own logic.     

The Role of Assessments and Institutions for Policy Learning: A Study on Swedish Climate and Nuclear Policy Formation

This study examines two challenges related to the integration of environmental concerns into public policymaking: how to shape institutions that facilitate policy learning in national policymaking processes, and how to create effective supporting assessment processes. A simple construct of policy learning is applied empirically; distinguishing what is learned in terms of conceptual and technical learning, and unpacking the process of learning into three elements: knowledge acquisition, interpretation, and institutionalization. Two empirical policy cases, climate and nuclear policy formation in Sweden, are analyzed over two decades, detecting patterns of learning and investigating what institutions have facilitated or obstructed them. The analysis is based on a study of actual policy outputs, an examination of reasoning and argumentation in policy documents, and evidence from testimonial interviews. Results indicate that climate policy has undergone fundamental learning processes whereas nuclear policy has been more intractable. Most learning has occurred in some agency and committee processes, while ministries and political levels have suffered from weak capacities and incentives to learn. Key drivers of learning included trust building among key agents coupled to international driving forces. Ultimately, institutional rules, capacities, and incentives are more important factors for enhancing learning than what types of assessments feed in.     

For a Few Dollars More: Public Trust and the Case for Transporting Nuclear Waste in Dedicated Trains

The debate about the use of dedicated trains for shipping spent fuel and high level nuclear waste has been going on for the past 15 years. The nuclear industry and its regulatory agencies would like to consider the case closed. The recent passage of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Uniform Act of 1990, however, opens the door once more, giving the railroads and other proponents of dedicated trains another chance to present their case. This paper argues that earlier conclusions favoring regular trains over dedicated trains were based on incomplete cost and risk information and neglected other factors which are not technical, but social and institutional in nature. The paper finds that the additional cost of a dedicated system is lower than previously thought and concludes that it is a small price to pay for reduced public opposition and increased levels of trust.     

How American Core Values Influence Public Policy: Lessons From Federal Aid to Small Business, 1953–1993

Why does the federal government provide aid for small business? This article contends that American core values are one of the sources of small business aid. Rather than taking the values/policy congruence approach of the national values school, it demonstrates a mechanism through which core values have influenced small business aid and through which core values likely influence other policies. The focus is on the processes of policy problem definition. While a role for core values in problem definition processes has been noted previously, core values have neither been a center of attention, nor have the various paths of values influence been linked. Analysis of the problems defined in the legislative histories of 39 systemically selected small business aid enactments, 1953–1993, shows avenues of values influence that have been under-appreciated or not appreciated at all.     

The Auditing of Public Policy and the Politics of Auditing: The U.S. GAO and Israel's State Comptroller

A purist conception of audit independence appears to be obsolete. A survey of audit activities of the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and Israel's State Comptroller describes pressures on audit bodies to examine sensitive policy issues and to enter partisan and personal squabbles between elected officials. The critique of the GAO by the National Academy of Public Administration recommends that legislators refrain from asking the audit body to deal with politically sensitive issues. In order to salvage something from the principle of audit independence, it appears more realistic to urge diligence on the part of the supreme auditor.