Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West

Couverture
Cornell University Press, 17 janv. 2008 - 254 pages

One of the most vexing problems for governments is building controversial facilities that serve the needs of all citizens but have adverse consequences for host communities. Policymakers must decide not only where to locate often unwanted projects but also what methods to use when interacting with opposition groups. In Site Fights, Daniel P. Aldrich gathers quantitative evidence from close to five hundred municipalities across Japan to show that planners deliberately seek out acquiescent and unorganized communities for such facilities in order to minimize conflict.

When protests arise over nuclear power plants, dams, and airports, agencies regularly rely on the coercive powers of the modern state, such as land expropriation and police repression. Only under pressure from civil society do policymakers move toward financial incentives and public relations campaigns. Through fieldwork and interviews with bureaucrats and activists, Aldrich illustrates these dynamics with case studies from Japan, France, and the United States. The incidents highlighted in Site Fights stress the importance of developing engaged civil society even in the absence of crisis, thereby making communities both less attractive to planners of controversial projects and more effective at resisting future threats.

 

Table des matières

Tables
1
Picking Sites
26
Descriptive statistics of siting data 19451995
35
Having more powerful politicians increases the probability
41
A Logic of Tool Choice
50
Airport Siting in Japan and France
70
Number of articles with the key words airport and
74
Siting Water Projects in Japan and France
95
Steady media coverage of antinuclear sentiment in Japan
122
Decreasing public support for nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s
136
Declining trust in Japanese nuclear power
144
French Nuclear Power Plant Siting
152
Deepening opposition to nuclear power in the 1990s
170
Percentage of French respondents in favor of nuclear power
178
Total approved expropriation applications per year
190
Droits d'auteur

Low level of media coverage of antidam sentiment over
98

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À propos de l'auteur (2008)

Daniel P. Aldrich is Professor of Political Science and Co-director of the Security and Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University.

Informations bibliographiques