Understanding Policy Reversals and Policy Stability: Grundlegende Policy-Änderungen und Policy-Stabilität verstehen

This chapter discusses structural, institutional, and situational factors that exercise influence on nuclear energy policy decisions. It reviews the respective literatures and introduces the dependent variable, i.e. nuclear energy policy reversals. Building in particular on the work of Kitschelt (1986) and Midttun and Rucht (1994), the chapter then discusses the explanatory variables that potentially drive such changes: anti-nuclear movements, public opinion, the systems’ electoral and federal openness, political parties’ vote-seeking, principled ideological goals, or office-seeking, new policy challenges in terms of energy policy and climate change concerns, nuclear accidents, and path dependence due to the countries investment in nuclear energy. Hypotheses are formulated for how these factors impact nuclear energy policy-making.