The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe

Abstract

This paper investigates the relation between objective conditions and grievances and the construction of the nuclear energy “problem” and the mobilization of anti-nuclear movements in Western Europe. Using data on protest reactions to the Chernobyl disaster in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, we first discuss the effects of so-called “suddenly imposed grievances.” We then turn to the frame alignment model, which emphasizes the importance of processes of definition and interpretation for the mobilization of social movements. We confront this model with data on public attitudes towards nuclear energy and anti-nuclear movement mobilization in Western Europe. Our analysis indicates that objective conditions as such have little explanatory power, and that similar events and conditions have led to widely diverging interpretations and levels of anti-nuclear mobilization in different countries. We find that the differential success of the interpretative efforts of anti-nuclear movements does not depend on the nature of the discursive struggle itself, or on the evidential base for the anti-nuclear movement's claims. Our data show that the movements’ political opportunities, and the resulting cross-national variations in the degree to which anti-nuclear movements have been able to block or slow down the expansion of nuclear energy, have been crucial determinants both of the movements’ impacts on public opinion and of the movements’ levels of mobilization. We conclude that a combination of the political opportunity and framing perspectives is most fruitful in making sense of the differential careers of the nuclear energy conflict in Western Europe.