Political EconomicApproachesto DevelopmentPolitical Economy Spring 202.docx

Political Economic Approaches to Development
Political Economy Spring 2020
What is Development?
How should we define development?
Quality of Life
Urbanization
Level of Manufacturing
GDP
Energy Consumption
Median Household Income
Education
Level of Technology
Why Does Development Matter
The absolute find themselves in conditions degraded by disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and
squalor denying them the basic human necessities.
Robert McNamara
Â½ the world population l (3 billion) live on less than $2.50/day
1.3 billion live on less than $1.25/day
5 stages of Development WW. Rostow
Is Development Inevitable?
Does development naturally follow:
Efficiency
Specialization
Surplus/Savings/Investment

Increased Productivity/Innovation
Trade
Consumption
Internal Barriers to Development
Inequality in income/wealth, especially when tied to racial, cultural, or other social divisions
Poor Infrastructure
Roads, Ports, Electricity, Water/Sanitation, Communication/Wireless
Quality of Financial Institutions
Availability of Savings, Credit, Investment
Poor Education System
Lack of Security
Lack of Natural Resources
Lack of Political Freedoms
Corruption/patronage
Market Failures
Geography/Bad Neighbors
External Barriers to Development
Multinational or Transnational Corporations (MNC/TNC) control of resources
Bad Deals
International Division of Labor
International Trade Patterns and Practices
WTO
Regional Trade Blocks

EU
TPP
NAFTA/UMCA
Institutional Change and Development
What institutions are needed to manage economic development?
Legal System
Pubic Works/Infrastructure
Public Health
Birth of new Institutions
Financial Sector
Banks
Stock Markets
Insurance Companies
Regulation
What is the Appropriate
Role of the State?
5 stages of Development WW. Rostow
Varieties of Paths to Development â€“ Washington Consensus
Free Market/Free Trade
Low government borrowing. The idea was to discourage developing economies from having
high fiscal deficits relative to theirÂ GDP.
Diversion of public spending fromÂ subsidies to important long-term growth supporting sectors
like primary education, primary healthcare, andÂ infrastructure.
Implementing tax reform policies to broaden the tax base and adopt moderate marginal tax rates.

Selecting interest rates that are determined by the market. These interest rates should be positive
after taking inflation into account.
Encouraging competitive exchange rates through freely-floating currency exchange.
Adoption of free trade policies. This would result in the liberalization of imports,
removingÂ trade barriersÂ such as tariffsÂ andÂ quotas.
Relaxing rules on foreign direct investment.
The privatization of state enterprises. Typically, in developing countries, these industries include
railway, oil, and gas.
The eradication of regulations and policies that restrict competition or add unnecessary barriers
to entry.
Development of property rights.
Varieties of Paths to Development â€“ Beijing Consensus
Free Market With Chinese Characteristics
Innovation â€“ the government must actively innovate constantly tinkering with the institutions
in the economy to respond to changing situations.
Pursuit of Dynamic Goals/Rejection of Per Capita GDP
Quality of Life (Human Development Index)
Balancing Rural/Urban Development
Balancing Regional Development
Balancing Economic and Social Development
Balancing Development Between Man and Nature
Balancing Domestic Development and Opening to the Outside World
Self Determination
Empowering develop countries to choose there own path to development and resist a one size fits
all prescription for development.
Varieties of Paths to Development â€“

Export Led - Asian Tigers
Economic growth through the production and exports of production in which a county has a
comparative advantage.
Diversity of the Economy
Degree of Government involvement in investment, subsidies, protectionism
Import Substitution â€“ Latin America
Focus on developing products for domestic market instead of importing good.
Infant Industry
Denying the Economy the benefit of free trade and comparative advantage
Costly in subsidies and tariffs
High level of government involvement in business decisions
Foreign Direct Investment
Encourage foreign companies to locate in a country to stimulate economic growth
Often in Extractive Industries
Fish or Teach to Fish Dilemma
Foreign AId
Less Developed Counties receive economic assistance from more developed countries to grow
their economy
Comes with Stings
Corruption
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Four Theories of Public Policy Making and Fast Breeder Reactor Development
Author(s): Herbert Kitschelt
Source: International Organization , Winter, 1986, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter, 1986), pp. 65- 104
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706743
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706743
Four theories of public policy making and fast breeder reactor development Herbert Kitschelt
The recent revival of the discipline of political economy challenges purely economic
explanations of economic growth, technological innovation, and sectoral change. This approach
recognizes that political actors, institutions, and strategies to organize the economic process
together shape the economic development of industrial societies. Whereas economists have
emphasized determinants of growth such as savings and investment rates, degrees of domestic
and international competition in an industry, or the supply of labor, the new political economists
view the political definition of property rights, the nature of state intervention in the economy,
the resources of politically mobilized groups, and political actors' belief systems as critical
determinants of economic transformations.' Both economists and political economists, however,
share the assumption that actors are rational; they pursue their interests in a calculated manner
within a given system of institutional constraints.

The commitment to rational-actor models and to a structuralist analysis of interests and
institutions represents the smallest common denominator among modern political economists.
Outside this conceptual core exists a wide variety of competing hypotheses, four of which appear
in this article:
so-called sociological theories of policy making, political coalition theory, domestic regime
structure theory, and international systems theory. Although theoretical and empirical work on
these approaches has as yet been incon- clusive, recent research points to the compatibility and
complementarity of different explanations, rather than a simple zero-sum competition between
them.2 Single-factor theories are usually not rich enough to capture the dy-
For helpful comments on a first draft I thank Joseph Grieco and Peter Lange. 1. For a
sophisticated historical reconstruction of economic and political development, see
Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981). 2. In
this vein Peter A. Gourevitch in "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources
of Domestic Politics," International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978), pp. 881-91 1, links inter-
national systems and domestic coalition arguments. Several authors have attempted to combine
International Organization 40, 1, Winter 1986 0020-8183 $1.50 ? 1986 by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the World Peace Foundation
66 International Organization
namics of complex processes of industrial transformations. Even careful research design-that is,
the selection of difficult cases, and the analysis of crucial experiments in the perspective of a
specific theoretical proposition- can rarely control all relevant intervening variables or provide
sufficient data. Rather than resignation or an indifferent endorsement of theoretical pluralism and
eclecticism, these problems should stimulate empirical investigations to
engage in more complex theoretical arguments and in a configurative analysis of public policy
making. Testing the compatibility and interdependence of different theories prevents theoretical
parsimony from leading to oversimplification.
In this article I will provide an example of how a complex configurative policy analysis can be
constructed. The likelihood that multiple explanations of public policy will be found relevant
increases if analysts employ one or any of the following four strategies in comparative analysis:
survey a large number of cases; compare determinants of several different policies; measure the
dependent policy variable at a high level of quantitative precision (interval scales), or at least

distinguish analytical components of public policy; compare determinants of a specific ongoing
policy using time series data.
Although I analyze a single policy-the development of fast breeder reactors (FBRs) in France,
the United States, and West Germany -I break down the dependent policy variable into a number
of analytical components. Moreover, I examine FBR policies over time to determine whether or
not the causal structure of policy making remains the same.
Traditionally, comparative public policy studies, especially with respect to economic and
industrial policy making, have poorly defined and conceptualized their dependent variables.3 In
the case of FBR development policy, quantitative policy measures are difficult to construct.
Instead, I distinguish among four analytical aspects of policy making:
1.The social groups that mobilize around a public policy. Here I am looking for an explanation of
the structural position of actors in a policy arena and the relevance actors attribute to a policy
issue vis-a-vis their self-definitions of "interests."
domestic structure and political coalition theories; see, for example, Peter J. Katzenstein, "Con-
clusion: Domestic Structures and Strategies of Foreign Economic Policy," in Katzenstein, ed.,
Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Francis G. Castles,
ed., The Impact of Parties (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982); John Zysman, Government, Markets, and
Growth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Peter A. Hall, "Patterns of Economic
Policy: An Organizational Approach," in Stephen Bormstein, David Held, and Joel Krieger, eds.,
The State in Capitalist Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984).
3. Cf., as a good critique, George D. Greenberg, Jeffrey A. Miller, Lawrence R. Mohr, and Bruce
C. Vladeck, "Developing Public Policy Theory: Perspectives from Empirical Research,"
American Political Science Review 71 (December 1977), pp. 1532-43. Studies of economic
policy making often do not clearly distinguish output variables such as tax policies and welfare
expenditures from policy outcome variables such as employment, inflation, and economic
growth. The problem can be seen in Manfred Schmidt, Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik unter
bufrgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen (Frankfurt: Campus, 1982), pp. 121-23.
Fast breeder development 67
2.The specific institutional arenas of political decision making. Here I focus on the
organizational rules of selectivity which facilitate or impede the access of actors to a specific
arena. It is distinguished from the broad political regime and opportunity structure in a country
which features "policy styles" and institutions that remain similar across policy arenas. (I will
elaborate this point below.)

3.The decision-making process. In the case of FBR policy a number of subgroups are closely
enough meshed to merit treatment as a single complex of variables: the use of resources and the
coalitions of actors preferring specific policy options; the choice of policy instruments to pursue
an objective-public incentives, regulation, state investment, and so on; the extent to which these
instruments are applied. The second and third subgroups are aspects of policy "outputs."
4.The economic, social, and political impacts of policy, that is, its "outcomes." Outcomes are
determined by the effectiveness and the efficiency with which certain results are brought about,
the unintended side effects of a policy, and the legitimacy that policies enjoy.
A public policy, then, is a cluster of actors, institutions, decision-making processes, and
outcomes. Obviously, a causal relationship exists among the four components of policy making.
The interplay among actors, decision- making processes, and outputs logically precedes the
outcome. But the precise nature of the relationship may well be contingent upon broader
constraints and inducements to policy formation. For FBR development in France, West
Germany, and the United States, political actors and policy arenas do not directly covary with
decision-making processes and policy outcomes. Sim- ilarly, in FBR policies in the 1970s,
although actors are similar across countries, policy arenas, processes, and outcomes differ.
Unfortunately, much of the empirical policy literature focuses on just one component of policy
making-budget allocations, or measures such as inflation, economic growth, social unrest, for
example-without reconstructing the complexities of policy formation. This narrow focus
promotes single- factor explanations.
In addition, time and timing in the ongoing (re)production and transformation of social systems
also have received little attention.4 Most theories treat time as a continuous, linear variable. It is
then possible to look at the relative timing of a country's development within the context of
international systems. Within countries, domestic structure theories point to the relative inertia of
institutions; hence, the past predicts future policies most successfully. But within both
approaches, change in public policy, and the role of time and timing for public policy, are
explained in terms of invariant causal con-
4. In social theory this issue has been critically analyzed by Anthony Giddens, Central Problems
in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), especially pp. 202-4.
nections between variables. Relations between variables are expected to remain stable over
time and be applicable to a broad range of contexts. This is logically and theoretically assumed
when policy analysts treat cross-sectional comparisons of public policies as if they revealed
longitudinal patterns of policy formation. Contrary to this assumption and inference, causal rela-

tionships in policy making may themselves change over time. Time, timing, and contextual
boundary conditions of public policy making may limit the generality of theories about policy
formation much more than the nomological version of policy theory leads us to believe. If
theoretical propositions about policy making are only valid in very limited contexts, cross-
sectional and longitudinal analysis can no longer be treated as equivalent. Conversely, we can
imagine that time and timing can change the nature of causal relationships that are involved in
public policy making. We may also have to assign a time index to theoretical propositions about
policy formation to account for rupture. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of public
policy may then single out different determinants of public policy.5
It is possible to link theory and empirical investigation of public policy without falling into the
traps of reductionism, eclecticism, or linear time analysis. Analysis of the development of a new
and extremely sophisticated, research-intensive energy technology reveals that the theoretical
arguments which provide the most powerful explanations of the four components of policy
making will differ for a given period. Whereas sociological policy theories and coalition theories
describe FBR policy from the mid- 1960s until the economic and political watershed of 1973-74
in the three countries I compare here, domestic regime structure and international systems theory
provide the stronger explanation for the period after 1974.
The fast breeder reactor provoked intense political controversy in the 1970s. As a result, the case
is methodologically relevant because it dem- onstrates the significance of timing. The energy
crisis of the early 1970s and the gradual politicization of energy issues by environmental
movements in- troduced new "intervening" variables into FBR policy arenas. The impact of
these variables on public policy in the three countries differed considerably. Among France,
West Germany, and the United States, the trajectory of FBR policy, shaped by the intervening
variables, moved from greater similarity in the 1960s to greater dissimilarity in the 1970s and
early 1980s. An em- pirically exhaustive treatment of FBR policy within the confines of this
article
5. Only a few authors have conceptualized a historically changing structure of public policy
making. See, for example, Martin 0. Heisler and B. Guy Peters, "Comparing Social Policy across
Levels of Government, Countries, and Time: Belgium and Sweden since 1870," in Douglas
Ashford, ed., Comparing Public Policies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978); Peter Flora and Jens Alber,
"Modernization, Democratization, and the Development of Welfare States in Western Europe,"
in Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer, eds., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and
America (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1981); and Manfred G. Schmidt, "The Role of Parties in
Shaping Macro-Economic Policy," in Castles, Impact of Parties.

is not possible.6 Instead, I use the empirical case to make a point about the methodology and
theory of comparative policy analysis rather than to prove each empirical assertion about FBR
policy.
1. Determinants of public policy making
The four strands of public policy theory I review briefly do not exhaust the range of explanatory
options but define variables that are especially relevant in "most similar systems" comparisons,
such as between advanced capitalist democracies that share the same level of economic
development, competitive party systems, and similar structures of consciousness and culture.
Sociological policy theory
The first explanatory approach argues that the nature of policy issues in a societal context
determines the nature of political actors, decision-making structures and processes, and policy
outcomes. In similar societies, we expect to find similar policies toward the same issues across
political systems, varied policies across issues within the same system.
Neo-Marxist public policy analysis assumes that the structures of power and the interests in the
economic system determine the capacity of political groups to organize the shape of political
regimes and arenas, and, finally, of policy outcomes. Neo-Marxists emphasize differences in
policy formation between "state functions" such as the provision of industrial infrastructure or
social policies.7 Different styles of rationality emerge in political administrations, depending on
the policy arena,8 and different areas of state activity correlate with different organizational
structures of policy making.9 The structure and dynamics of state policies thus vary over time
and across policy arenas, for example, between repressive, economic, and ideological policy
concerns'0, or between production and circulation issues."I
These theories all rely on an overly simplistic image of social structure
6. For a closer investigation of FBR policies in the context of the overall energy policies of the
three countries, see Herbert Kitschelt, Politik und Energie (Frankfurt: Campus, 1983), chaps. 3-5.
7. See James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's, 1973); Claus
Offe, " 'Krisen des Krisenmanagements': Elemente einer politischen Krisentheorie," in Martin
Janicke, ed., Herrschaft und Krise (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1973).
8. See Claus Offe, "Rationalitaitskriterien und Funktionsprobleme politisch-administrativen
Handelns," Leviathan 2, 3 (1974), pp. 333-45.
9. Linking Marxist political theory to organization theory is Goran Therborn, What Does the
Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London: NLB, 1978).
10. Compare Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: NLB, 1973), and
Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: NLB, 1975).

11. See Gosta Esping-Anderson, Roger Friedland, and Erik Olin Wright, "Modes of Class
Struggle and the Capitalist State," Kapitalistate 4/5 (1976), pp. 186-220.
which takes economic class into account but treats sectoral, territorial, and
cultural differences as politically insignificant. Consequently, policy analyses often resort to ad
hoc categories such as class factions, societal categories or nonclass actors, and multiclass actors
in empirical investigations. Moreover, because actors do not always readily define their interests
in class terms, policy structures, processes, and outcomes cannot be directly deduced from a
political-economic class analysis.
A second version of policy theory shares with neo-Marxism the assumption that determinate
societal "interests" shape the processes and outcomes of policy formation, but rejects class
analysis as the sole foundation of such interests in favor of a more flexible, inductive approach
that links the actors' perception of the costs and benefits of policy options to the nature of a given
policy process. In this vein, James Q. Wilson proposes that political groups will organize and
mobilize more or less vigorously depending on the perceived
costs or benefits of a policy.'2 Accordingly, governments can easily adopt policies with
concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, but it is almost im- possible for them to act on policy
issues with the reverse configuration. Policies with both distributed costs and benefits can easily
be institutionalized, whereas policies with highly concentrated costs and benefits lead to
protracted and intense conflicts with the affected actors.
Although Wilson avoids economic determinism, his approach raises some questions. Are the
actors' definitions of costs and benefits grounded in and explainable in terms of the social
structures that generate the decision-making problems? Or, are the perceptions themselves the
final anchor of the theory?
The first alternative leads to a historically and structurally refined macrosociological theory. By
implicitly choosing the second alternative-a sub- jective, actor-oriented definition of interests and
stakes-Wilson risks depriving the theory of content. Circular reasoning and ad hoc assumptions
can render the theory tautological by attributing the perceptions of costs and benefits to actors
after the fact, based on observed patterns of policy making.
Similar questions exist with respect to Theodore Lowi's well-known policy theory of public
policy making, which distinguishes four types of political arenas.'3 In more recent work, Lowi
rejects both a sociological-structural and a subjectivist definition of policy issues. Instead, he
adopts a statist perspective, treating the formal, legal provisions of enacted policies as a "formal

classification of the functions of the state" and of the intentions of the rulers.'4 A semantic
analysis of laws then generates predictions about policy processes that are associated with
specific legal patterns.
12. James Q. Wilson, Political Organization (New York: Basic, 1979), chap. 16. 13. Theodore
Lowi, "American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory,"
World Politics 16 (July 1964), pp. 677-715, and Lowi, "Four Systems of Policy Politics and
Choice," Public Administration Review 32 (July-August 1972), pp. 298-310.
14. See Theodore Lowi, "The State in Politics: An Inquiry into the Relation between Policy and
Administration" (ms., Cornell University, 1982), p. 1 1. In this more recent formulation, Lowi's
approach is no longer far removed from another statist policy theory that uses properties
Correlations between semantic structures of law and policy formation, though interesting, fall
short of the expectations Lowi's original formulation raises. The statist formulation cannot
explain why new policy issues that are not yet legally codified produce certain patterns of policy
formation.'5 More- over, other than by reference to the rulers' volitions, the statist approach
cannot explain systematic changes of legal codifications of a policy issue over time. Lowi's
approach disconnects the link between social structure and policy formation. The operational
content and the impact of policy on politics and society are, as Lowi himself confirms,'6
irrelevant for his approach.
Short of a statist or a subjectivist approach to policy theory,'7 I see only two avenues to a policy
theory that links social structure to politics and avoids a reductionist conceptualization. An
inductive approach can always test the hypothesis that, within structurally similar societies,
specific policy issues are associated with similar patterns of policy making and cost-benefit
perceptions by actors. Assuming this hypothesis to be true, one can work backwards to
reconstruct the underlying dynamics of interest formation in a society. Second, we can
deductively explain the actors' perception of costs and benefits in a given social structure and
make predictions about policy patterns. Although a substantive analysis of societal cleavages-of
the emergence of preferences or values and of changes in cognitive and normative orientations-
requires a more far-ranging macrosociological foundation than space allows, I will propose three
formal hypotheses about the logic of interest mobilization in modern capitalist societies which
political-economic theories of collective action and resource mobilization elaborate, and which
empirical studies confirm: the magnitude and distribution of material gains or losses through a
policy decision determines the level and aggregation of political mobilization in conflicting and
coalescing groups; actors discount the future, hence they will mobilize more vigorously in
response to policies with short- term impacts than those with long-term impacts; within this logic

of social mobilization of interests, Wilson's hypotheses about the ease of policy innovation,
institutionalization, and conflict aggregation are valid.
Domestic regime theory
A second theory of policy formation directly opposes issue-based and sociologically based
explanations, and argues that policy patterns within
of decision processes to predict the nature of political actors, conflicts, and outcomes: Jiirg
Steiner, "Decision Process and Policy Outcome: An Attempt to Conceptualize the Problem at the
Cross-National Level," European Journal of Political Research 11 (September 1983), pp. 309-18.
15. In a sense Lowi has thus confirmed the criticism made by discussants of his earlier work that-
contrary to the statement "policy determines politics-the "policy type is rather an ex- planandum
than an explanans of public policy." See Greenberg et al., "Developing Public Policy Theory," p.
1542.
16. Lowi, "The State in Politics," p. 1 1. 17. This subjectivist turn has been advocated by Peter
Steinberger, "Typologies of Public
Policy: Meaning Construction and the Policy Process," Social Science Quarterly 61 (September
1980), pp. 185-97.
countries across policy arenas are more similar than those across countries within policy
arenas."8 Building on the comparative study of political institutions, political economists and
policy analysts have updated this approach. In the most general sense, domestic regime and
opportunity structures of politics are expected to shape the participation, organization, and
processes in all policy arenas of a country. The specific national "policy styles" that emerge are
based on complex institutional patterns that govern entire political systems.'9 Such patterns are
the principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures that have been firmly
institutionalized over time and that survive fluctuations of power and coalitions among political
actors in a country.20 These domestic regimes are thus relatively impervious to sudden changes
in the domestic balance of power. Regime theories explain new policy processes and outcomes,
if these can be predicted on the basis of knowledge about recurring patterns of policy making
which are typical across policy arenas within a country.
Political economists distinguish two not always complementary theories of domestic political
structure. One focuses on the interaction between state and society, specifically, political
articulation and interest aggregation. It distinguishes pluralist patterns of interest intermediation

in which multiple, overlapping, decentralized interest groups that arise spontaneously vie for the
attention of policy makers, from a neocorporatist pattern of more orderly, sectorally
monopolistic, and comprehensive interest groups that work in policy making through firmly
established channels of communication; are represented equally in decision procedures; and are
attributed a semiofficial
participation status by the government in policy formation.2' In contrast to corporatist systems,
pluralist systems tend to permit a broader representation of newly mobilized political actors with
innovative political claims.
The other domestic regime theory is concerned with the state's capacity to impose policies and
implement them consistently. It highlights variables such as the territorial and functional
centralization of the executive branch, the domination of the executive over the legislature, the
control of material and informational resources by the state, and the ability of policy instruments
18. This argument is developed in Douglas E. Ashford, "The Structural Analysis of Policy or
Institutions Really Do Matter," in Ashford, Comparing Public Policies.
19. The analysis of national policy styles is attempted in Jeremy Richardson, ed., Policy Styles in
Western Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982).
20. The definition of domestic structures and international regime structures rests on similar
methodological and conceptual choices. For a definition of international regimes along lines
similar to the definition of domestic structures see Stephen D. Krasner, "Structural Causes and
Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables," International Organization 36
(Spring 1982), pp. 185-205.
21. For the growing literature on state-society relations in capitalist democracies, see Suzanne
Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), and Gerhard Lehmbruch and Philippe Schmitter, eds., Patterns of Corporatist Policy-
Making (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982).
to induce change in civil society.22 Especially in "strong" states, interest intermediation between
state and society may not be confined to pluralist
and corporatist options. Rather, states may selectively recognize only some mobilized interests
concerned with a policy issue. Segmented policy patterns result, in which a limited range of
compatible interests is co-opted into the

policy process. States may even exclude or subordinate interest groups al- together and develop
policies in a statist fashion.
Domestic structure theories suggest that similar policy problems will generate different groups
of actors and levels of mobilization, structures of policy arenas, decision-making processes, and
policy outcomes contingent upon the predominant type of politics in a country (pluralist,
corporatist, segmented,
or statist) which expresses institutional patterns of interest intermediation and state strength.23
Coalition theories
Both sociological policy and domestic regime hypotheses are deterministic in that they seek
policy explanations that ignore the actors' capacities and
volitions. In contrast, coalition theories assert the significance of conscious choices by actors and
groups that have common and identifiable goals and purposes.24 In this view, policies emerge
from the formation of winning coalitions among mobilized groups. We expect coalitions that
unite actors with similar resources and interests to develop similar policies. Conversely,
differences in policy result from differences in coalitions. Groups will enter into coalitions
according to their interests, whether defined in economic and class terms (income, market share,
economic hegemony) or by sectoral, regional, and cultural criteria.
Whereas sociological policy theories often draw from structural Marxism, certain coalition
theories approach a voluntaristic Marxist theory of political power.25 Similarly, regime theories
see policy as institutionally determined,
22. See for instance Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978), chap. 3. A combination of interest intermediation and state capacities is
attempted in Katzenstein, "Conclusion: Domestic Structures."
23. Criticisms of this perspective have been advanced from other public policy theories. For
issue-based approaches see Steiner, "Decision Process and Policy Outcome," pp. 310-1 1, and
Zysman, Governments, Markets and Growth, p. 297. From the perspective of international
systems and political coalition theories, see Gourevitch, "Second Image Reversed," p. 301, and
Zysman, Governments, Markets and Growth, pp. 347-49.
24. Coalition theories are developed in Peter A. Gourevitch, "International Trade, Domestic
Coalitions, and Liberty: Comparative Responses to the Great Depression of 1873-1896," Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 8 (August 1977), pp. 281-313, and Gourevitch, "Breaking with
Orthodoxy: The Politics of Economic Policy Responses to the Depression of the 1930s," Inter-
national Organization 38 (Winter 1984), pp. 95-129; and Gbsta Esping-Anderson and Roger
Friedland, "Class Coalitions in the Making of West European Economies," Political Power and
Social Theory 3 (1982), pp. 1-50.

25. In this vein coalition theories have often blended a Marxist, economy-based conception of
politics with a pluralist, group-based vision of the political process. Recent reformulations
while coalition theories emphasize the multiple opportunities for group coalitions to influence
public policy. The image of policy making espoused in coalition theory underlies those
comparative public policy analyses that have found political party strength and control of
government to be key determinants of public policy.26 While left-wing parties represent the
interests of the working class, right-wing parties are the political agents of the bourgeoisie.
Starting from this simple key proposition, coalition theory analyzes public policies according to
the relative strength, durability, unity, and success at forming coalitions of each of the principal
blocs. We therefore expect policies to vary across countries and over time within countries,
depending on party strength and control of the government.
Coalition theories investigate three factors as determinants of public policy: the strength or
weakness of identifiable, mobilized groups in society; the interests of these groups; and their
actual capacities and skills to enter into coalitions. All too often, however, actual applications of
coalition theory identify groups and group preferences in terms of the same structural bases of
power and interest in society that sociological policy theories, especially of the Marxist variety,
typically employ. Thus coalition theories frequently blur their distinctiveness from structural
analysis.
International systems theories
Whereas the previous theories are concerned with domestic determinants of policy, an alternative
exists that considers countries only as elements of an international system. Accordingly, the
international system of states shapes the internal politics in each of its elements.27 Dominant
interests and possible courses of public policy result from each country's structural location in
the international system. Like economic theory, this approach makes certain simplifying
assumptions in order to explain system-level processes and corresponding domestic policies:
countries or states as the elements of the international system can be treated as actors, that is, as
entities to whom volitions can be attributed; states are self-interested and seek military and
economic power in absolute as well as relative terms within the system; states follow
of pluralism by Dahl and Lindblom have come rather close to a similar conceptualization of
politics in capitalist democracies. For a critique see John F. Manley, "Neo-Pluralism: A Class
Analysis of Pluralism I and Pluralism II," American Political Science Review 77 (June 1983),
pp. 368-83.

26. See, for example, Francis G. Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); David R. Cameron, "The Expansion of the Public Economy: A
Comparative Analysis," American Political Science Review 72 (December 1978), pp. 1243-62;
and Douglas A. Hibbs, "Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy," American Political
Science Review 71 (December 1977), pp. 1467-87.
27. See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,
1979), and, critically, Robert 0. Keohane, "Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and
Beyond," in Ada Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.:
APSA, 1983).
optimal (or at least satisfycing) strategies in pursuit of their objectives and order their objectives
consistently to allow for rational action. The theory proposes that international systems tend
toward a fairly stable balance of power. Actors with similar positions in an international system
of power, dependence, and interdependence select similar strategies, while actors with different
positions pursue different strategies. This framework yields several specific hypotheses, two of
which relate to international security concerns. First, where several actors share a collective
good, providing common security
through cooperation, and where the actors are of unequal size and weight so as to benefit
unequally from the collective good, the largest and most important actor(s) will have to shoulder
a disproportionate burden.28 A second security-related hypothesis predicts that countries will
mobilize their domestic power resources more vigorously and exhibit less domestic conflict in
public policy making as their sensitivity and vulnerability to foreign threats and control of
critical resources increases.
This logic has also been applied to the economic dimension of international politics.29 The
relative position of a country in the international political economy may determine its approach
toward economic modernization. Latecomers in industrial development will seek to overcome
their disad- vantage by means of vigorous state intervention in and regulation of economic
activities. More ambitious theories claim a connection between the timing
and stage of industrialization, the relative position of a country in the world economy, and the
form of the political regime itself.30 (The mirror image of states rising in the shadow of
hegemonic powers is the relative decline of economic and political leaders: their efforts to
modernize the economy wane, they become leaders of financial rather than industrial world
centers, and they engage increasingly in foreign economic investment.) Entrepreneurs can take

advantage of relative-factor prices in less developed countries, because military hegemony
secures property rights on a global scale.3'
Debate continues over the limitations and problems of neorealist international systems theory.
In passing, the issues include the difficulty of attributing interests to collectivities such as
states;32 the historically recent
28. In the limitational case that a subset of actors constitutes a "privileged group," whose benefits
from supplying the collective good are higher than its goods, this privileged group will supply
the entire collective good. See Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1982).
29. In this sense the openness of economies to world markets has been suggested as a constraint
on domestic policy making. For example, see Cameron, "Expansion of the Public Economy."
30. See James R. Kurth, "Industrial Change and Political Change: A European Perspective," in
David Collier, ed., The NewAuthoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979).
31. See Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic, 1975).
32. For debate on this point see Krasner, Defending the National Interest, pp. 35-43, and,
critically, Keohane, "Theory of World Politics," p. 521.
TABLE 1. A preliminary hypothesis about the relation between explanatory theories and aspects
of public policy
Sociological Political Political International policy regime coalition systems theory theory theory
theory
Policy actors X - -
Policy structure - X
Policy process - - X
Policy outcomes - - - X

territorial differentiation of the international system into states,33 and the possibility it will give
way to functionally differentiated but territorially overlapping units;34 and, the applicability of
the microeconomic paradigm, that is, to what extent we can disassociate "unit level," domestic
and international, and "system-level" determinants of policy.
Predictions about the shape of public policy based on the four theoretical traditions presented
here vary widely. Sociological policy theories see similar issues associated with similar policy
patterns, regardless of how the overall political institutions or the domestic and international
distribution of resources and skills vary across countries. Domestic regime theories anticipate a
cor- relation of any particular public policy in a country with the policy style that prevails in that
country. Coalition theories emphasize the skills and resources of actors, as against issue and
regime structures, and, therefore, expect similar policies only where similar coalitions prevail.
International systems theories apply when the location of states in international systems predicts
similarities and differences of policy making among them.
A simple way to connect the four theories of policy making and the four components of public
policy patterns would be to propose a specific affinity to one aspect of public policy for each
theory. Sociological policy theories seem to explain the constitution of interests and the
mobilization of actors; regime theories explain the structure of specific policy arenas; coalition
theories examine the process of policy formation; and international systems theory sheds light on
the realization of objectives, as facilitated and constrained by the location of state actors in their
international environment. (See Table 1.)
Relating theories to aspects of policy making according to this model is for the heuristic purpose
of presentation only. The case of FBR policy reveals that this model is too simplistic to reflect
the relationship between deter-
33. For a historical critique of Waltz's theory see John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and
Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis," World Politics 35 (January
1983), pp. 261-85.
34. Efforts to test the relative explanatory power of "realist" and "complex interdependence"
views of international politics can be found in Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and
Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
minants and attributes of policy making. In fact, the policy literature realizes the need for more
complex models, but more progress has been made by combining explanatory variables than
with respect to a sophisticated con-

ceptualization of policy itself.35
2. Fast breeder reactor policy in the 1960s and early 1970s
Compared to conventional commercial converter reactors (such as the light- water reactor, the
Canadian heavy-water reactor, or the gas-cooled reactor),
the FBR has the potential of using uranium resources up to sixty times more efficiently. Unlike
converter reactors, the FBR has no moderator in its core to slow the flow of neutrons. Therefore,
"fast" neutrons convert nonfissile uranium 238 into fissile plutonium isotopes at a much higher
rate than occurs in other reactors. As long as enough "fertile" uranium 238 is present, the FBR
can "breed" more fissile material than it consumes. Bred plutonium isotopes are extracted from
the irradiated fuel elements through reprocessing
technologies. Next, they are refabricated as plutonium oxide fuel elements. Finally, they become
the fissile inventory of FBRs destined to convert more fertile material into fissile isotopes, while
producing heat that is employed to generate electricity. Solutions to the problems posed by the
FBR and its fuel cycle have depended on very expensive long-term research and development
programs.
Sociological policy theory and FBR development
The sets of political actors in FBR policy, and certain structural, processual, and outcome aspects
of FBR policy making were quite similar in France, the United States, and West Germany until
the early 1970s. Actors who
35. This limitation applies to most of the literature referred to in fn. 2. It is also highlighted by
Robert Alford's seminal "Paradigms of State and Civil Society Relations," in Leon N. Lindberg,
Robert R. Alford, Colin Crouch, and Claus Offe, Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism
(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975). First, Alford's recommendation to use class, elite,
and pluralist arguments in a layered analysis of policy making omits "institutionalist" approaches
(regime theory), while the methodological similarity of elite and pluralist analysis may warrant
treating them both as variations of coalition theory. Second, his essay sheds little light on the
conceptualization of policy itself. For a sophisticated empirical application of Alford's
framework see J. Allen Whitt, "Toward A Class-Dialectical Model of Power. An Empirical
Assessment of Three Competing Models of Political Power," American Sociological Review 44
(February 1979), pp. 81-99. Given that Whitt studies referenda decisions about public trans-
portation projects in just one setting, California, structural-institutional impacts on policy making
cannot be analyzed well. Moreover, the analysis tends to focus on groups and decisional
outcomes while neglecting an explanation for the shaping of the policy arenas or the choice of
policy instruments. This is unfortunate, because the conditions that lead to the choice of the
policy instruments, e.g., the financing schemes for public rail systems, could be a serious
contender to his own preferred explanation of referenda outcomes, the mobilization of class
(factions)- unless he were prepared to argue that these choices merely reflected class interests.

expected short-term, concentrated advantages from a vigorous development policy resided in the
scientific communities of all three countries. The eventual societal payoff (a new energy
conversion system) legitimized the construction of basic research facilities. The second
immediate constituency of FBR development included the engineering and electromechanical
industries that were already developing first-generation nuclear reactors in the three countries.
Given the technological risks, the uncertain economics, and the lack of an accepted institutional
framework within which to use highly sensitive fission technologies, private industry was very
reluctant to invest significantly in the new technology.36 Both science and industry looked to the
state for help.
Until the early 1 970s, only the direct economic beneficiaries of FBR research (scientists, nuclear
industry, associated government agencies, and regional governments where large research
facilities were located) were mobilized and enthusiastic about the FBR. The national
governments of the three countries gave little priority to the FBR effort. Even within the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the West German Ministry of Scientific Research (Bun-
desministerium fir Wissenschaftliche Forschung), and the French Com- missariat a l'Energie
Atomique (CEA), other energy projects received greater attention until the mid-1960s or later.
The FBR did not offer governments an opportunity to mobilize broad constituencies because it
lacked an immediate or foreseeable impact.
As a consequence, FBR funding remained at retrospectively modest levels in all three countries
throughout the 1960s. In the United States, the responsible AEC division could only overcome
federal resistance to funding a very large FBR effort, when, in 1971, the United States became a
net importer of energy. The Nixon administration then reluctantly agreed to elevate the FBR to a
high-priority program.37 Similarly, in West Germany, the FBR remained one among several
reactor designs pursued throughout the 1960s.38 In France, the FBR became vital for the CEA
only in 1969, when the development and commercialization of its converter reactor line,
36. The market failure argument for government intervention in FBR policy has been challenged
by Otto Keck, Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program. The Case of the West German Fast Breeder
Reactor (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1981), chap. 1. Keck points to large private in-
vestment efforts, for example in the computer industry, but he overlooks the fact that the breeder
reactor is only one part of an extremely complex nuclear fuel cycle. Moreover, the institutional
uncertainties of breeder development, due to its military sensitivity as well as its extraordinary
hazard potential, are unmatched in the history of industrial innovation.
37. For budget data see Brian Chow, The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor: An Economic
Analysis (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), p. 13. In the 1960s the

LMFBR budget grew mostly at the expense of other advanced reactor technologies. Only
between 1970 and 1976 did annual budget allocations for the LMFBR skyrocket, from about
$100 million to about $650 million.
38. The spreading of West German development funds over several reactor lines is documented
by Keck, Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, p. 73.
the gas-cooled reactor, was terminated, leaving the agency in need of a new priority.39
Electric utility companies, like state agencies, exhibited only very limited enthusiasm for the
FBR. In none of the three countries did utilities perceive either an immediate need for vigorous
development efforts or an economic rationale for participating in the costs of FBR demonstration
plants. The political logic behind the one apparent exception to this rule, the effort of American
utilities and nuclear industries to build the 1 00-megawatt (electric) FERMI-reactor near Detroit,
had little to do with FBR technology per se. Begun in the mid-1950s at the height of the debate
about private versus public organization of electric utilities, the project was intended to
demonstrate private industry's willingness to develop nuclear power in a private framework and
to prevent socialization of the utility sector.40 The project failed for technical reasons, and
private industry developed a cautious research strategy for the FBR as a result.
Other potential constituencies and crucial participants of nuclear policy did not mobilize around
the FBR issue until the 1970s. Military and foreign policy concerns played a negligible role until
1974. Both the United States and France already controlled other technologies that supplied
plutonium in sufficient quantities for their military programs. And in West Germany, the breeder
reactor project surfaced only when a nuclear rearmament had been ruled out.41 Throughout the
early period of FBR development, consumer and environmental groups remained almost entirely
inactive, because the FBR was a remote, hypothetical technology. The only exception was the
conflict about the FERMI-reactor between its builders and the United Auto Workers of
America.42
In all three countries, the distribution of players around FBR development directly corresponded
to structural similarities of the FBR policy arenas. Only players with technical expertise and
immediate institutional interests in technology development had access to policy arenas.
Structurally, the
arenas were far removed from the main coercive and economic organizations of the state; they
were not clearly integrated into a centralized, hierarchical chain of command; and they relied on
the voluntary participation of essentially

39. For the controversy about the end of the French gas-cooled reactor see Jean-Marie Colon, Le
nucleaire sans les francais. Qui decide? Qui profite? (Paris: Maspero, 1977), and Irwin C. Bupp
and Jean-Claude Derian, Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved (New York: Basic,
1978), p. 62.
40. The public vs. private power debate is discussed in Aaron Wildavsky, Dixon- Yates: A Study
in Power Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), and Harold P. Green and Alan
Rosenthal, Government of the Atom (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).
41. To keep military options open, West Germany might have favored the heavy-water reactor
technology during the 1950s. See Joachim Radkau, "National politische Dimensionen der
Schwerwasser-Reaktorlinie in den Anfangen der bundesdeutschen Kemenergieentwicklung,"
Technikgeschichte 45 (Autumn 1978), pp. 229-56.
42. The environmental conflict about the FERMI-reactor is discussed in John G. Fuller, We
Almost Lost Detroit (New York: Random, 1975).
autonomous organizations, collectivities, and quasi-non-governmental cor- porate bodies. The
arenas constituted segmented subgovernments, which were exposed to very few public pressures
to legitimate their activities and decisions.
Funding of development projects proceeded according to the incremental and distributive logic
of positive-sum games in which overall spending levels remained sufficiently low to maintain a
correspondingly low political profile. Simultaneously, the FBR programs of all three countries
employed similar
policy instruments, such as publicly financing research facilities and subsi- dizing industrial
research. These many similarities between the FBR policies in the three countries support
sociological policy theory. Nevertheless, FBR policies were associated with significantly
different coalitions among the mobilized actors, substantive research strategies, and policy
outcomes in each country.
With respect to policy outcomes, countries made varying progress in their programs. But all
actors shared the same key rationality and performance standards for FBR development. In
addition to emphasis on technical progress of development efforts, the future economic need and
viability of FBRs were stressed. In all three countries, the reactor proponents prepared elaborate
cost-benefit analyses to argue their case.43 No consideration, however, was given .to the social
acceptability and institutional implications of FBRs and their associated fuel cycles.

Political coalitions in FBR development
Although a sociological policy theory explains how and why actors, non- actors, organizational
structures, and standards of rationality converged in all three countries during the early
development of the FBR, it fails to address adequately other important features of the policy
process and its outcomes. Even in the early time period, France, the United States, and West
Germany exhibited some notable FBR policy differences. Coalition theory shows that the
relative strength of the key actors in FBR policy varied across countries. Simultaneously, unique
coalitions in FBR policy emerged in each country during the 1960s and these coalitions cannot
be interpreted simply in terms of theories about sociological or political structures of interests.
Coalition theory, however, does not explain the variation in outcomes of FBR demonstration
reactor projects in that time period.
In the United States, the early dominance of national research laboratories
43. For the calculation of reactor development strategies in France see J. Andriot with J.
Gaussens, Economie et perspectives de l'energie atomique (Paris: Dunod, 1964); for the United
States see U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Potential Nuclear Power Growth Patterns (Wash-
ington, D.C.: GPO, 1970); and for West Germany, Wolf Hafele and Helmut Kramer,
Technischer und wirtschaftlicher Stand sowie Aussichten der Kernenergie in der Kraftwirtschaft
der Bun- desrepublik (Karlsruhe: GfK/KFA, 1971).
and private industry in FBR policy ended in the mid- I 960s when the failure of past
development programs became apparent. One small research breeder
designed by Argonne National Laboratory suffered a partial core melt-down during
experimentation; a second reactor, facing engineering and financing problems, was completed
five years behind schedule and over budget. Simi- larly, the FERMI-reactor was beset by
technical and financial problems, and experienced a partial core melt-down soon after
completion in 1966. The failure of private industry and national laboratories set the stage for
leadership
to shift to the central AEC staff, which, supported by the congressional representation of the
nuclear community in the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, embarked on a more centralized,
state-controlled FBR program in 1965, closely modeled after the successful program to develop
reactors for navy submarines in the 1950s.44 The new program focused on the development
and quality control of innovative reactor systems components rather than on complete
demonstration plants, and limited the role national laboratories and industry could play to
subcontracting. By spreading around industrial contracts, the AEC intended to preempt

development of a monopoly in the nuclear reactor industry. However, centralized program
direction, coupled with widely dispersed research contracts, ignored the most experienced and
knowledgeable industrial and scientific institutions in the FBR arena, and soon proved
unworkable. These organizational failures are highlighted by the Fast Flux Testing Facility
(FFTF) project for breeder fuel elements. Scheduled to begin operation in 1973, it was actually
delayed until 1980, by which time its estimated costs had escalated from $87.5 million
to $1.5 billion.45 Not surprisingly, industry, national laboratories, and then the Joint Committee
on Atomic Energy soon grew dissatisfied with the AEC program. In the late 1960s, they
demanded a large breeder demonstration plant be built under control of industry and utilities.
In West Germany, a strong scientific community in the major national laboratory at Karlsruhe
sought full control over the emerging FBR program in the 1960s and asked the Ministry of
Science to restrict industry to subcontractor status for the testing and the demonstration of FBR
facilities. The administrative management of the government's FBR program did not have a large
independent staff of experts, unlike the AEC, and relied primarily on industrial expertise. In the
conflict between science and industry about the control of the FBR program, the ministry allied
itself with industry, a move that was consistent with the overall philosophy of German industrial
policy to allow private business to take as much initiative as possible.46 In
44. A detailed analysis of the navy reactor program can be found in Richard G. Hewlett and
Francis Duncan, Nuclear Navy, 1946-1962 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
45. For the U.S. breeder program in the 1960s see Michael D. Stiefel, "Government Com-
mercialization of Large Scale Technology: The U.S. Breeder Reactor Program, 1964-1976"
(Ph.D. diss., MIT, June 1981).
46. A good account of the controversy about leadership in the German FBR program is Keck,
Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, pp. 67ff., 80ff.
1964, a project committee of the ministry asked for industrial bids to design
breeder demonstration plants. From then on, the leadership of the FBR program remained firmly
in the hands of a few large companies in the electrical
and engineering industries, most notably Siemens. National laboratories participated only in
basic research and component development. Industry even designed and built the first sodium-
cooled breeder test reactor at Karlsruhe.

The German FBR program emphasized industrial self-regulation: that is, industrial consortia
developed the substantive technological choices and programs, while the state underwrote a
major fraction of the development costs and risks. Under the leadership of Siemens, engineers
designed a sodium- cooled FBR that closely resembled the U.S. design (West German engineers
opted for plutonium-oxide fuel elements and sodium as a coolant). Another consortium, under
the leadership of the electromechanical manufacturer All- gemeine Elektrizitats-Gesellschaft
(AEG), proposed a very different steam- cooled breeder reactor. In 1969, after a protracted
conflict, that project was abandoned when it became clear that a lack of testing facilities and the
less advanced state of international research on this reactor design would throw the project far
behind the liquid metal (sodium-cooled) FBR.47
In contrast to the West German and the American experience, the French FBR development was
not hampered by major conflicts between the principal groups of actors. As in the other
countries, a large government research
facility, Cadarache, was involved in the program effort. Unlike in the other countries, however,
the administrative leadership of the CEA had unusual authority over the research community. A
conflict between the nuclear research community, and the engineers and administrators in the
CEA head- quarters had been resolved in favor of the latter in the early 1950s.48 Unlike in the
other countries, the French engineering and electromechanical industries were, both in terms of
know-how and economic potential, too weak and fragmented to assume leadership of a research
program as complex as the breeder technology.
The absence of industrial competition and the strength of the administrators and engineers in the
CEA led to a more concentrated research effort than in other countries. Early on the CEA
committed itself to specific technical pathways (e.g., the reactor coolant and the chemical
composition of the fuel elements); it built cumulatively on past research findings and gradually
increased the size of reactor components and facilities.49 A crucial step in this process was the
construction of a 20-megawatt (thermal) experimental breeder
47. The conflict about the choice of FBR technologies in West Germany is discussed in
numerous contributions to Atomwirtschaft-Atomtechnik 14 (April 1969).
48. For the conflict between scientists and engineers-administrators in the early development of
the French CEA, see Lawrence Scheinman, Atomic Energy Policy in France under the Fourth
Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), and Spencer R. Weart, Scientists in
Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
49. For the French choice of reactor technology, see CEA, Rapport annuel (Paris, 1962), p. 118.

reactor called RAPSODIE. Private industry was involved in this project as
a subcontractor. For this purpose, CEA arranged the formation of an industrial consortium
(GAAA, Groupement Atomique Alsacienne Atlantique).
Both coalition and domestic regime theories would predict the dominance
of private industry in the West German case and of a combination of civil administrators and
engineers in France. The West German state had traditionally abstained from directly shaping
industrial policy in the post-World War II era and kept an arm's-length relationship to business,
relying on tax and foreign-trade policies to create a climate conducive to technological
innovation and economic growth.50 On the other hand, the French state was
a major actor in industrial modernization throughout the 1 960s, attempting to reorganize
fragmented, weak, and outdated industrial sectors into inter- nationally competitive corporations
with access to state-of-the-art technology.5' Domestic regime theory, however, would not have
predicted the process of coalition formation in the U.S. breeder program of the 1 960s. The
American state, like its West German counterpart, generally displays characteristics of a "weak"
state relative to the private economy.52 Nevertheless, a state- centered policy coalition did
emerge temporarily in the FBR program, although it lasted only a short time. The ensuing
realignment brought the American FBR policy process in closer agreement with what domestic
regime theory would have predicted.
Regime theory and policy outcomes: FBR demonstration reactors
Although regime theory is ill-equipped to explain the process of FBR policies in the 1 960s, it
sheds some light on one particular task and outcome within these programs, the construction of
large FBR demonstration plants on the order of from 250 to 350 megawatts (electric) in each
country. Such plants had been designed in the mid- I 960s, when the United States appeared the
clear technological leader, equally ahead of France and West Germany. Each country's success in
actually bringing facilities on-line, however, differed dramatically as the decade progressed. For
the first time, the political visibility of FBR programs was raised beyond the narrow bounds of
actors within the highly technical policy arenas; the programs drew new actors, such as the
electric utilities and national finance industries, into the policy process and thus made the impact
of more general, country-specific policy styles felt on FBR policy.
In the United States, under the onslaught of increasing pressure by the
50. Cf. Hans-Joachim Amdt, West Germany: Politics of Non-Planning (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1966).
51. See Keith Pavitt, "Government Support for Industrial Research and Development in France:
Theory and Practice," Minerva 14 (Autumn 1976), pp. 330-54, and John Zysman, "The French
State in the International Economy," in Katzenstein, Between Power and Plenty.

52. Krasner, Defending the National Interest, chap. 3.
reactor industry and congressional supporters of nuclear research expendi-
tures, the AEC leadership had to concede authority over the initiation of a demonstration reactor
project in 1969. But because of several problems, defining the project and arranging for
contractors took no less than four years. The first conflict involved selecting the major industrial
contractors of the project. Eventually, all major reactor manufacturers (notably General Electric,
Westinghouse, and the engineering firm Bechtel) were invited to participate in the project. The
second problem concerned financing. The
U.S. Bureau of the Budget insisted private industry share the financial risks involved. But as a
result the electric utilities, whom the AEC designated to operate the plant, were reluctant to
commit resources to the project. Protracted negotiations between the manufacturing industry, a
national consortium of electric utilities, and the AEC yielded only a fixed contribution of $240
million by the utilities, with the state absorbing all the remaining construction costs (estimated to
be about $500 million in the early 1 970s) and all potential cost overruns.53 A third problem
concerned the management of the demonstration project. The initial agreement rested on a very
complex distribution of authority between the AEC, the utility consortium, and the
manufacturing industry, which soon proved unworkable.54 As the cost estimates of the project
rose dramatically and the percentage of the private financial contribution to the overall project
therefore decreased, the Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA), successor to the
AEC, took over authority for the entire project.
Similar struggles over the financing and institutional design of a demonstration project also
burdened the West German FBR program. Utilities resisted pledging open-ended financial
support for the project, although the public authorities, backed by the Finance Ministry,
originally insisted on it. But, as in the United States, in the final instance the government
assumed all contingency costs, and the utilities and manufacturers contributed only a fixed and
relatively small sum of the project costs (DM 120 million out of an original estimate of about
DM 1.5 billion in 1972). Unlike the U.S. case, the management of the project went to industry,
reaffirming the self- regulated character of German technology policy. The Siemens subsidiary
Interatom had emerged as the only plausible general contractor for the demonstration plant,
once AEG had withdrawn from the FBR development in 1969. But the reactor industry and
utilities still had to settle a number of
53. Documents of the "project definition" phase in the LMFBR program are published in the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, LMFBR Demonstration Plant Program: Proceedings of the

Senior Utility Steering Committee and of the Senior Utility Technical Advisory Committee
(Washington, D.C., 1972).
54. Changes in the FBR project management were discussed by the Joint Economic Committee
of the U.S. Congress, Fast Breeder Reactor Program (Washington, D.C., 1975), pp. 2273ff.; see
also U.S. General Accounting Office, The LMFBR Program: Past, Present, and Future
(Washington, D.C., April 1975).
disagreements about the design of the FBR plant. The utilities insisted on economizing on the
costs of reactor and fuel elements, while the manufacturing industry emphasized technological
innovation and high performance. In this conflict, the utilities prevailed.55 Just as in the United
States, resolution of these problems required about four years (1968-72).
In sharp contrast to West Germany and the United States, institutional problems proved to be
insignificant in the French preparation of a breeder demonstration project. Organizationally,
construction arrangements for the 250-megawatt (electric) Phenix reactor resembled those of the
test reactor RAPSODIE: technology and engineering were provided by the CEA and
subcontracts were given to the industrial consortium GAAA.
Unlike the RAPSODIE project, the French utility, Electricite de France (EDF), participated in
the project. But its role and concerns sharply contrasted with those of electric utilities in the West
German and American breeder projects. In these countries, utilities had to risk private capital in
the research venture and therefore proved to be difficult partners in the negotiations with the
domestic reactor industries and government agencies. In France, on the other hand, the
nationalized EDF could afford a less risk-averse investment strategy. The state, in any case,
would underwrite the financial risks of the Phenix project. No wonder, therefore, that the
managerial structure of the project proved less cumbersome than that of FBR projects in the
other countries.
The project's tight organizational structure, continuity, and incremental improvement in
technology development, and the well-established relationships among the major players
(except the EDF) made it possible to build the French reactor rapidly.56 In just four years (1969-
73), before nuclear energy became a target of intense political controversies and while its com-
petitors in West Germany and the United States were still negotiating the details of
demonstration projects, France completed its FBR plant. The estimated costs of the Phenix
reactor turned out to be lower by a factor of three or four (in constant prices) than the estimated
costs of the corresponding projects in the other two countries.57
International systems theory and early FBR development

What remains to be evaluated is the influence of the international system on domestic FBR
policies. At least in the 1960s, the international political
55. Keck, Policy-Making in a Nuclear Program, pp. 148-50, praises the economizing spirit of the
utilities. But these savings might have been erased by project delays due to the lengthy
negotiations.
56. The Phenix project is described in G. Vendryes et al., "Situation et perspectives de la filiere
de reacteurs a neutrons rapides en France," in United Nations and International Energy
Authority, Fourth International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, vol. 5
(Geneva, 1971).
57. U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency, Energy Policies in the European Com-
munity (Washington, D.C., 1975), p. 132, estimates the price of the Phenix reactor at about $530
million.
configuration sheds little light on FBR development policies. In all three countries, nuclear
proliferation and security worries had subsided or were, in the wake of Eisenhower's "Atoms for
Peace" program (1953-54), divorced from concerns about commercial nuclear energy. There was
also little fear of international energy supply shortages, which could have increased the
significance of the FBR as a future energy supply.58
Certainly the breeder played a role in the international technology competition. But such
competition was less a national concern than a preoc- cupation of domestic subgovernments,
which were often at odds with the general foreign-policy commitments of their countries. For
instance, officials in the FBR subgovernments in France and West Germany competed for
international technological leadership in FBR development, while national politicians intended to
use long-range nuclear technology development as a vehicle of European integration.59 The
budgetary constraints on breeder programs indicate the FBR's limited role with respect to
national interests. There is also little evidence to support the "declining hegemony" argument,
which would predict vigorous efforts in France and West Germany to catch up with or surpass a
faltering U.S. program. The difference between the French and the West German programs
renders this hypothesis invalid. Moreover, U.S. budget outlays for breeder development
throughout the 1 960s remained far higher than in the other two countries. Although France and
West Ger- many benefited from U.S. technological leadership by avoiding some technical dead
ends (such as metallic fuel elements in the early test reactors), the role of the "advantages of
backwardness" pales in significance to the influence of various coalitions and institutions
concerned with the FBR.60 International systems theory does not, finally, offer a set of

hypotheses consistent with the reality of FBR development during the 1960s and 1970s in the
three countries.
3. The crisis of FBR programs in the 1970s and early 1980s
In the 1970s, national FBR policies had to cope with three new challenges. Correspondingly, the
causal structure underlying policy changed in this period. Domestic regime theory provides the
most persuasive explanation for the
58. Although some authors have claimed a continuing concern with energy security in French
policy since the 1920s, public documents show that such worries had subsided in the 1960s and
early 1970s and that a further rise in oil imports was no longer considered undesirable. See
Commissariat Generale du Plan, Plan et prospectives: l'energie (Paris: Colin, 1972).
59. Cooperation in the French and West German FBR programs soon gave way to intense
competition; cf. Henry Nau, National Policy and International Technology (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1974), chap. 8.
60. Note, for instance, the loss of three to four years in the West German and U.S. FBR
demonstration projects relative to the French effort. These delays were due entirely to
institutional difficulties of the development program.
three countries' FBR policies, but international systems theory makes at least an indirect
contribution.
Sociological policy theory and the FBR crisis
Sociological theory can explain the emergence of new issues, actors, and interests associated
with FBR policy in the 1 970s, but it cannot account for any structural features of political
decision making in FBR policy arenas. New groups of actors began to participate in FBR policy
making when they began to perceive the rapid development of the new technology as damaging
to their interests. For some, material costs and rewards of collective actions were not the
motivating factors, which suggests that the logic of interest
mobilization described earlier requires modification. There were at least three developments and
challenges that brought about the emergence of new political actors and interests in FBR
policy.

The first new challenge that mobilized additional sets of political actors and reoriented the
interests of established actors was the energy crisis of 1973-74. The sudden realization that
Western industrial countries were vul- nerable to foreign energy suppliers reinvigorated the
search for new energy
sources and the FBR figured prominently among them. Faced with the energy crisis, most of the
past conflicts between the players within existing FBR policy arenas disappeared. For instance,
utilities in West Germany and the United States became fully committed to the breeder.
All three countries also faced the second challenge of antinuclear power movements, which grew
out of concern for the preservation of the natural environment and the protection of nature and
society from man-made risks.6' In each country, the rapid growth of nuclear power programs
attracted their attention and criticism, and eventually led them to oppose the large FBR
demonstration plants, thought to be the next logical step toward escalating the nuclear power
economy. First and foremost, they challenged the safety of FBR technology. They also
questioned its economic efficiency, given the great uncertainties about the cost of reactors and of
the corresponding fuel cycle, as well as the projected costs of natural uranium.62 Later, the
debate turned to the consequences of the use of very dangerous, militarily sensitive, nuclear
technologies to preserve civil rights in a democracy, and to the impact of a global "plutonium
economy" on the maintenance of nuclear nonproliferation policies.63
61. For a broader discussion of these movements see Herbert Kitschelt, "Political Opportunity
Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Countries," British Journal of
Political Science 16 (Winter 1986), and "New Social Movements in the United States and West
Germany," Political Power and Social Theory 5 (1985).
62. Thomas B. Cochran, The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor: An Environmental and
Economic Critique (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
63. See Amory B. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977), and Robert
Jungk, Der Atomstaat (Munich: Kindler, 1978).
The antinuclear movement's environmental concerns overlapped with the third challenge to
established FBR policies: a reawakening of the foreign- policy debate about the link between
"peaceful" nuclear energy technology and nuclear weapons. In light of the nuclear explosion in
India in 1974 and of numerous other nuclear development programs in Iraq, Pakistan, Ar-
gentina, Taiwan, Israel, and South Africa, the compatibility of complete nuclear fuel cycles, a
necessary component of a world breeder economy, and the maintenance of an international
nonproliferation regime became sensitive issues. This latter problem is, of course, central to the

explanation put forth by international systems theories for FBR policy in the 1 970s. Sociological
policy theory cannot quite explain why FBR proliferation concerns were loudly voiced not only
within the U.S. foreign-policy community but also within those of the other two countries.
Although environmental and consumer opposition to FBRs existed in each of the three countries
in the 1 970s, political decision arenas, decision-making processes, and outcomes diverged
further than in the preceding period. The new actors and interests developed different capacities
to modify FBR policies and to redefine the nuclear subgovernments that linked the
manufacturing industry, research laboratories, electric utilities, and promotional nuclear state
agencies within each country. Sociological policy theories are unable to explain this divergence.
Instead, they would predict similar policy structures, processes, and outcomes as a consequence
of similar issues in each country.
Political coalition theories and FBR policy in the 1970s
Does coalition theory predict policy formation more accurately than sociological policy theory?
Coalition theory predicts that the challenge to established nuclear policy arenas and policy
decisions is strongest where newly mobilized demands are most powerful or where the
established proponents of FBR are the weakest. As I discuss elsewhere, there is little indication
that antinuclear sentiment differed systematically among the three countries or that it was
strongest where the FBR program was impeded the most, namely the United States.64 It appears
rather that, at the height of the nuclear power controversy (1976-79), between 35 and 45 percent
of the population sampled in opinion polls opposed nuclear power. West Germany certainly
displayed the highest level of antinuclear activities (demonstrations, petitions, lawsuits), and the
breeder reactor demonstration project at Kalkar was one of the antinuclear movement's prime
targets. But, though delayed, the project survived.65 Similarly, the French antinuclear
movement targeted the site of a
64. See Kitschelt, "Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest." 65. For the
politicization of the breeder demonstration reactor in West Germany see Herbert
Kitschelt, Kernenergiepolitik. Arena eines gesellschaftlichen Konflikts (Frankfurt: Campus,
1980), chap. 5.
new precommercial, very large 1,200-megawatt (electric) Super-Phenix FBR for several massive
demonstrations but was unsuccessful in even slightly affecting the planning and implementation
of the reactor.66 On the other hand, in the United States, where opposition was much less visible
and more soft-spoken, the breeder demonstration project was nevertheless abandoned at the end
of a struggle that lasted almost ten years (1974-83).

Differences in the strength of probreeder coalitions also provide only very limited support for
coalition theory. The long-standing participants in FBR policy arenas closed ranks in all three
countries. Utilities supported FBR development unequivocally. And even in the 1980s when
expectations about future electricity demand growth had been revised downward dramatically,
both in the United States and in West Germany, private utilities offered to spend more of their
own funds to save FBR development programs.67 Also, the state agencies responsible for
nuclear technology in all three countries never wavered in their support of breeder reactors. In
fact, nuclear subgovernments were able to put their stamp on long-term energy programs that
were developed as an immediate response to the energy crisis of 1973-74. In each case, FBRs
emerged as the highest-priority future energy technology.68
Finally, coalition theory proponents could argue that the coalitions in the three countries
exhibited different degrees of fragility and resourcefulness. Although this may have been true for
the 1960s, it does not hold for the 1970s and early 1980s. By then, all three countries had
concentrated their advanced reactor industries in a very few powerful, capable firms. Even
France had eliminated its traditional industrial weakness by nurturing a single national
"champion" in the nuclear industry, Framatome, which was then owned in equal shares by
Creusot-Loire and the CEA.69 Its subsidiary, Novatome, was charged with the industrial
implementation of the FBR project Super-Phenix. To conclude that the resourcefulness of the
French electric utility (EDF) is so much greater than that of its West German and American
66. French antinuclear opposition is reviewed in Francis Fagnani and Alexandre Nicolon,
Nucleopolis: materiaux pour l'analyse d'une societe nucleaire (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires
de Grenoble, 1979), and most recently in Tony Chafer, "The Anti-Nuclear Movement and the
Rise of Political Ecology," in Philip G. Cemy, ed., Social Movements and Protest in France
(New York: St. Martin's, 1982).
67. In West Germany agreements in April 1983 increased the utilities' and the reactor man-
ufacturers' shares of the FBR demonstration reactor's cost to DM 1.42 billion, or 22% of the
project costs (Nuclear Engineering International, 28 June 1983, p. 3). Similar arrangements were
aired during 1983 in the United States, but Congress terminated funding before they could bear
fruit.
68. Cf. Bundesregierung, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1. Fortschreibung des Energiepro-
gramms (Bonn: Bundestags-Drucksache VII/2713, 1974); U.S. Energy Research and
Development Agency, A National Plan for Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration
(Washington, D.C., 1975); Commissariat Generale du Plan, Rapport de la commission de
l'energie sur les orientations de la politique energetique (Paris: Ministere de l'Industrie, 1975).
69. For the reorganization of the French nuclear industry see Jacques Gaussens, "Creation d'une
industrie nucleaire et arboriculture," Revue de l'energie 30 (August-September 1979), pp. 597-6
17.

counterparts is difficult. Rather, what appears to have set France apart from the other two
countries are the specific ties between industry and state agencies, the variations of which in the
1970s closely correlate with broad patterns of political regime structures in France, the United
States, and West Germany.
The lack of a direct link between the composition of political coalitions and government policy is
also indicated by the minimal impact government changes have had on FBR policy. In the West
German and French cases, FBR programs survived changes in government in 1981 (France) and
1982 (West Germany), despite the highly politicized nature of nuclear policy. Con- versely, no
matter what the executive's official position on FBR policy in the United States was, the FBR
program declined during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, and it was finally killed
during the Reagan administration, Reagan's vigorous support notwithstanding.
It is noteworthy that similar economic and political coalitions led to quite different national
policy structures, processes, and outcomes, and that different coalitions led to similarities of
policy formation. Resourcefulness, levels of political mobilization, and control of the executive
branch of government, contrary to what the pluralist and coalition positions suggest, do not
directly translate into policy. The domestic regime or "opportunity structures" that endowed the
challenging interests with different capacities to "disorganize" the probreeder coalitions and to
alter policies made the crucial difference between the nuclear policies in the three countries
during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Political regime theories and FBR policies in crisis
In the United States, new political actors in the nuclear controversy en- countered a permeable
institutional field of channels that could be penetrated and used as a base to articulate and
aggregate political demands in the battle against the established probreeder subgovernment. The
fluid political structure allowed political coalitions to form that eventually killed the breeder
project. This openness is evidenced by the access antinuclear groups gained to agencies charged
with monitoring environmental matters. As early as 1972, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) began to criticize the unsatisfactory state of environmental impact research on
FBRs and their fuel cycles. In 1975, both the EPA and the General Accounting Office joined
antinuclear forces in criticizing favorable economic cost-benefit analyses of the FBR program.70
In the same year, these criticisms precipitated a congressional compromise about the funding of
the FBR demonstration reactor at Clinch River, according to which public expenses for the
project were not to be authorized in a single stroke but, rather, incrementally or on an annual
basis.
70. See, for instance, the testimony of an EPA representative in the hearings of U.S. Congress,
Joint Economic Committee, Fast Breeder Reactor Program, p. 334.

This facilitated the campaign against the breeder by the Carter administration and by
congressional opponents.
With increasing public sentiment opposed to nuclear power, many members of Congress
switched to an antinuclear position. Not bound by parliamentary party discipline, a politically
heterogeneous group of political entrepreneurs in Congress coalesced to oppose the FBR; its
membership cut across party lines and included environmentally oriented members of Congress
and fiscal conservatives, who opposed any "industrial policy." This group eventually controlled a
majority of the votes in both houses and killed the Clinch River project in 1983.
In the same vein, President Carter built his political coalition around those influential segments
of public constituencies and state agencies which opposed the breeder. The very heterogeneity of
the Carter antibreeder coalition and the wavering position of the administration on which
argument to use against the FBR show the fluidity of American policy makers and the
individualistic rationality of political players in this framework.7' The administrative units
promoting and administering nuclear energy research in the newly founded Department of
Energy (DOE) remained faithful to the breeder, while the political leadership of the department,
for pragmatic reasons, wanted to replace the Clinch River project with a more advanced reactor
design. On the other side, environmentally oriented politicians in the president's White House
staff and in executive agencies opposed nuclear technology in principle. In between, the foreign-
policy community split over the advisability of developing the breeder reactor and its fuel cycle
technology, given the dangers of the international nuclear proliferation.72
But during the Carter years, the probreeder forces in Congress remained able to counterbalance
the antinuclear assault and salvage funds for the demonstration project. The position of the
administration and of Congress led to a political stalemate: Congress, with shrinking majorities,
authorized and allocated funds for the Clinch River reactor; at the same time, President Carter
interrupted and terminated the licensing procedure for the project. Construction of the plant
could not begin, but reactor components were ordered and built. The probreeder Reagan
administration was not able to bring the FBR program back on the track. Faced with the fiscal
crisis of the U.S. federal budget, congressional majorities for the breeder, already slim,
eventually disappeared.
71. This analysis is based on Richard L. Williams, "The Need for Energy vs. the Danger of
Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: President Carter's Decision on the Clinch River Plutonium
Breeder" (Ms., National War College, Washington, D.C., 1978).
72. In 1975 the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency solicited a critical report on the
proliferation impacts of FBR fuel cycles by Albert Wohlstetter et al., Swords from Plowshares:

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