Social identities and deadlocked debates on nuclear energy policy

ABSTRACT

Since the security of energy supply in Europe is at stake, the debate on energy sources prominently took hold on the agenda of European countries. Nuclear energy is one of the issues on this agenda. However, nuclear energy is discussed quite differently in Germany and France, although the two countries both experienced strong public protest in the 1970s and are similar in size, economy, industry and culture. By comparing the two, this article analyses the reasons for the different debates on nuclear energy existent in Germany and France. It argues that stances on nuclear energy form the core of social identities that prevent members of these groups to deviate from the group norm. The relevance of certain types of identities is a function of the institutions of the political system. To change the way energy sources are discussed, it is necessary to create or make salient different group identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental policy
• green parties
• discourse analysis
• public policy
• technocratic elites

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement/data deposition

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at Figshare: http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20738275.

Notes

1 The dataset with the coded articles and the nodes and edges of the discourse network are available at Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20738275). The link also leads to the downloadable original article files as they were exported by LexisNexis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johanna Hornung

Johanna Hornung is a research associate at the KPM Center for Public Management, University of Bern, Switzerland. She is co-editor of the international journals European Policy Analysis and Review of Policy Research. Her research focuses on public policy and policy processes with a particular focus on applying actor-centred perspectives to health and environmental policymaking.