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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe (1995)

Auteur	R.Koopmans, J.W.Duyvendak
	6-09-0-00-66.pdf
Datum	mei 1995
Classificatie	6.09.0.00/66 (VERZET INTERNATIONAAL - ALGEMEEN)
Voorkant

The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact 
on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe
Author(s): Ruud Koopmans and Jan Willem Duyvendak

Source: Social Problems, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 235-251

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.