Fair rules for siting a high-level nuclear waste repository

Geologic repositories are designed to resolve the ever-growing problem of high-level nuclear waste, but these facilities invite intense local opposition due to the perceived severity of the risks and the possibility of stigma effects. This analysis examines whether the perceived fairness of the siting process affects local residents' support for hosting a repository. In particular, a survey of 1001 Nevada residents is used to test the hypothesis that an individual's willingness to accept a local repository will increase if he or she is convinced that this is the safest disposal option available. A logistic analysis indicates that beliefs regarding relative suitability have an independent effect on the acceptability of a local repository (i.e., Yucca Mountain). The article then considers the question of how to implement an optimizing strategy for siting facilities, comparing an idealized strategy against the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 and the Amendments Act of 1987. Although choosing the safest site seems as if it could enhance public acceptance of the repository program, there is currently little prospect of identifying the best option to the high-level waste problem and, as a result, little chance of gaining the public support that is necessary to promote a successful siting outcome.     

The role of compensation in siting hazardous facilities

Empirical evidence indicates that compensation can prove effective in gaining public acceptance for siting facilities on the benign end of the spectrum (e.g., landfills, prisons), but is subject to serious limitations when it comes to facilities that the public regards as particularly risky or of questionable legitimacy such as nuclear waste repositories. These facilities require creative mitigation measures such as independent inspections of the facility and local shutdown power. Even then they may be viewed as too risky to be acceptable with or without compensation. This article proposes a two-stage siting process which recognizes the importance of regulations and safety standards (Stage 1) while employing a voluntary process with compensation to address concerns with equity and efficiency (Stage 2).     

Achieving a negotiated compensation agreement in siting: The MRS case

Theoreticians claim that negotiated compensation plans could overcome local resistance to nuclear waste (or other less than desirable) facilities, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gives the Department of Energy considerable flexibility to negotiate with and compensate states in which it locates waste storage. DOE's monitored retrievable storage (MRS) proposal is the first attempt under the NWPA to site nuclear waste operations, and both DOE and one local community tried the negotiated compensation approach with some success. State and regional leaders chose to oppose the project rather than to negotiate, however. The limited experience to date suggests that local reluctance to negotiate is a generic weakness of the compensation approach to siting and must be given greater attention.     

Talking trash about landfills: Using quantitative scoring schemes in landfill siting processes

Policymakers and the public often turn to scientific experts for help in making decisions about complex policy problems. Such decisions, however, may involve trade‐offs among desired goals and so require considerable technical and political judgment. Typically there is no objectively "best" answer, although some answers may be better than others. We use a case study of a landfill siting process in Orange County, North Carolina, to analyze how quantitative scoring schemes may best be used to facilitate site selection processes. Quantitative scoring schemes, used and interpreted properly, can help policymakers and the public focus their attention on central rather than peripheral issues, and thereby conduct a more informed political debate. For the quantitative scoring scheme to fulfill this role, however, the community must be explicit about how the scoring scheme will be used within the larger decisionmaking framework. Clarifying the power and limitations of quantitative scoring schemes shows promise for facilitating decisionmaking regarding other locally unpopular land use siting processes, as well as any public policy decision involving multiple objectives. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The discourse of democracy in Canadian nuclear waste management policy

Canadian nuclear waste management policy has taken a deliberative democratic turn. What explains this turn? What is its significance? What lessons does it teach us? I trace a narrative of a powerful discursive coalition that was able to take advantage of institutional and financial opportunities to advance deliberative democratic decision making. I identify limitations in this turn by evaluating the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s subsequent consultation process against the criteria of inclusion, equality, reciprocity, agreement, and integration. Despite impressive deliberative democratic designs, the process falls short of each criterion. This analysis clarifies the relative importance of actors to coalitions and institutions. Even with a strong coalition and favorable institutional context, realizing deliberative democracy is contingent on the will of involved actors. This conclusion has implications for the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.     

Federalism and nuclear waste disposal: The struggle over shared decision making

Traditionally the domain of federal agencies, authority to select sites for the disposal of commercial high-level nuclear wastes has recently been expanded to include a role for host states. State opposition to earlier siting efforts had demonstrated the dificulties federal agencies faced in resolving conflict between the local population bearing the costs and the dispersed population receiving the benefits. The new model defines the agency and the state as adversarial representatives of these competing interests. An outstanding weakness, however, is that it does not clearly specify who should speak for the state, and may actually promote intrastate conflict. The adversarial approach does not provide a generic solution to the problem of federalism, but it may prove useful at the state level for selecting disposal sites for low-level radioactive wastes and hazardous chemical wastes.     

Conceptualizing consultation approaches: identifying combinations of consultation tools and analyzing their implications for stakeholder diversity

Policy Sciences - Contemporary governance is increasingly characterized by the consultation of different types of stakeholders, such as interest groups representing economic and citizen interests,...     

Public waste and private property. An enquiry into the economics of solid waste in Calcutta

Perceptions of solid waste management in India belong to a tradition of thought which dates back to the early nineteenth century. Solid waste is often thought of as a purely municipal problem. The paper examines how far informal systems of solid waste management are a response to a void in property rights. It analyses the variety of local operations in Calcutta, including the informal system. The assumptions that solid waste management is a public good that therefore needs to be municipalized and that in the absence of municipalization there would be greater costs are both questioned. It is hypothesized that there may be no measurable economies of scale in any part of the waste cycle. It may be more worthwhile to improve and expand the informal system of waste management than to collectivize further the traditional system of collection, transportation and disposal.     

Using knowledge for control in fragmented policy arenas

Analysts and researchers typically value knowledge for its contributions to the wisdom of policy action. Policymakers, however, typically value knowledge for its contributions to the exercise of political control. Our research on flows of knowledge among federal, state, and local education agencies documents how knowledge may increase the effectiveness of various control strategies. In these cases, knowledge is not intended to enhance rationality; it may or may not. It is intended to enhance control, and it does. Knowledge for control is particularly useful to policymakers who seek to intervene in policy arenas characterized by fragmented authority and widely dispersed resources.     

Mind the gap: Examining the role of gender in campaign staffing and compensation

Using publicly available data on campaign disbursements, we examine gender gaps in staffing and compensation for congressional campaigns between 2010 and 2016. We find significant differences in both staff representation and pay on the basis of gender. Women make up a lower proportion of campaigns’ staffs, on average, and receive less compensation overall than their male counterparts. These disparities are present across a wide variety of campaigns, but are exacerbated by partisanship, candidate gender, and incumbency status. We find that staffing and wage gaps are larger for Republican candidates, male candidates, and challengers. These findings provide new insight into distinctions in the political networks between Democrats and Republicans and the pipeline of future political candidates.     

The compensation hypothesis goes east: FDI and welfare state demand in postcommunist countries

While existing research provides evidence that globalisation sparks citizen demand for the welfare state in wealthy Western democracies, less is known about how globalisation affects public demand for welfare elsewhere. This study explores the link between globalisation and welfare preferences in postcommunist countries by examining workers at multinational corporations (MNCs). These workers have previously been found to have lower levels of job security, even in Western Europe. Additionally, in the postcommunist context, MNC employment also frequently offers better opportunities than other available jobs. This combination of risk and benefit creates higher demand for social insurance (such as unemployment insurance) because MNC workers have both higher job insecurity and higher costs of job loss (if the benefits of MNC employment make it difficult to find an equally good job). Original survey data from Ukraine shows that MNC workers experience greater insecurity and are paid more than other workers. They also express preferences for more expansive welfare programmes, prioritising those related to labour market insurance. This pattern of MNC workers’ experience and preferences is confirmed in cross-national survey data from 30 peripheral economies, demonstrating that the compensation hypothesis has wider application than previously shown.     

Coal and nuclear technologies: creating a false dichotomy for American energy policy

The American electric utility industry is entering a moment of transition. Once viewed as a stable and secure consortium of publicly regulated monopolies that produce and distribute electricity, the industry has weathered market restructuring only to face the ever-present risk of natural disasters, price fluctuations, terrorist attacks, and blackouts. This paper uses five criteria—technical feasibility, cost, negative externalities, reliability, and security—to evaluate the broad portfolio of energy technologies available to American electricity policymakers. Upon close inspection, energy efficiency practices, renewable energy systems, and small-scale distributed generation technologies appear to offer many advantages over large and centralized nuclear and fossil fueled generators. Contrary to the mimetic commentary produced by the media, these three approaches would present policymakers a superior alternative for curbing electricity demand, minimizing the risk of fuel interruptions and shortages, helping improve the fragile transmission network, and reducing environmental harm     

Reciprocal policy diffusion: the regulation of executive compensation in the UK and the US

Because of popular and political pressure, governments have been compelled to regulate ‘excessive’ executive compensation and search both a policy and political solution. In this paper, I seek to establish the mechanisms of policy learning, competition, and emulation by examining American and British regulatory policies of executive compensation that show evidence of reciprocal diffusion, i.e. from the US to the UK and vice versa. The evidence suggests that during the past two decades, the extent of reciprocal policy diffusion varied and was primarily driven by policy learning. Using published government reports, press releases, public hearings, newspaper articles, and interviews, I demonstrate that reciprocal learning occurred because one country's policymakers and practitioners explicitly discussed and/or referred to the practices in the other country when deciding to adopt a specific policy solution to the problem of excessive executive pay. I discuss the implications for the literature on diffusion and point out avenues for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Performance Measures for Federal Budgeting: Proposals and Prospects

The political system, the popular press, and the public have recently been concerned about measuring government performance. This concern for measuring performance should imply a concern for measuring it correctly. With this in mind, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently conducted an analysis of the use of performance measures in the budget process. The study attempts to review the issues raised by performance budgeting in the context of past and current efforts to link performance measures and budgeting. This article focuses on two portions of that study: The status of the current federal performance measurement efforts and specific observations designed to inject a note of caution into the current debate about performance measurement and budgeting.     

Strategizing in small group decision-making: Host state identification for radioactive waste disposal among eight southern states

Experimental work in economics has long focussed attention on strategic interaction amongst individuals. A robust result is that a large fraction of participants in public goods experiments act cooperatively. This paper tests for the extent of strategic behavior in a non-laboratory setting. These data were generated when representatives from eight southeastern states voted to identify one state as host for a regional disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste. We find that no state plays its dominant (free-riding) strategy, but none plays in a completely cooperative fashion either. This result is similar to that found in laboratory public goods experiments.     

高校基层党组织深化运用监督执纪第一种形态问题研究——基于60所高校专职纪检监察干部的调研

监督执纪“四种形态”是全面从严治党的重要手段,是新形势下党建理论新成果的实践运用,是标本兼治的科学方法。高校基层党组织日常工作中面临的主要是第一种形态的运用问题。通过对60所高校91名纪检监察干部进行调查,发现高校基层党组织在运用第一种形态方面一定程度上存在不想用、不敢用、不会用、不认真用的问题。解决这些问题,重点要以思想自觉和责任自觉提升行动自觉,确保第一种形态运用落地;要以制度建设推进运用常态化,确保第一种形态用得规范得当;要以能力建设推进运用用好用准,确保第一种形态运用质量;要硬化闭环工作机制,确保第一种形态用出实效。