Suchergebnisse

Contributors to this volume outline how societal actors have been closely involved in European integration from the founding of the EU to the Maastricht Treaty. Based on newly accessible sources, the authors discuss the participation of political parties, business groups and civil society organizations in European polity-building and policy-making.

"Dieser Aufsatz fragt nach der Rolle nicht-staatlicher Akteure in der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (EG) der 1970er Jahre. Er will dazu beitragen, die traditionelle diplomatiegeschichtliche Integrationsgeschichtsschreibung mit ihrem Fokus auf die Politik der Mitgliedsstaaten gegenüber 'Europa' zu überwinden, die gesellschaftliche Akteure kaum erfasst und analysiert. Die empirischen Beiträge über transnationale Sozialisten, Gewerkschafter, Landwirtschafts- und Umwelt-Lobbyisten in diesem Heft zeigen nachdrücklich, dass nicht-staatliche Akteure bereits in den 1970er Jahren transnational zusammenarbeiteten, ihre Organisationsformen europäisierten und zunehmend in der EG-Politik aktiv waren. Einerseits folgten die Verbände der Verlagerung von Politikfeldern auf die europäische Ebene. Andererseits - und zwar weit mehr als bisher bekannt - trugen sie selbst mit dazu bei, Themen, Umfang und Reichweite der europäischen Politik(en) zu definieren. Europäisches Regieren als governance ist in seinen Grundzügen somit bereits in den 1970er Jahren zu verorten." (Autorenreferat)

"Protest against nuclear power plants, uranium mining and nuclear testing played a pivotal role in the rise of a mass environmental movement around the globe in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the history of anti-nuclear activism has largely been told from a strictly national perspective. This HSR focus approaches the phenomenon from a transnational perspective for the first time. Against the backdrop of the debate on transnational history, this article develops a framework of analysis, and contextualizes anti-nuclear protest in a broader postwar perspective. The contributions show that anti-nuclear movements across the globe were transnationally connected. First, scientific expertise and protest practices were transferred between movements, and subsequently adapted to local requirements. Secondly, transnational cooperation and networks did indeed emerge, playing an important role in taking protest to the international and European level. However, as opposed to contemporary rhetoric of grass-roots transnational solidarity, such cooperation was limited to a small, highly skilled and committed group of mediators - often semi-professional activists - who managed to overcome the obstacles of distance and cultural differences and had access to the necessary resources." (author's abstract)

"An interdisciplinary book on nuclear energy that analyzes comparative case studies across Europe and the United States, considers nuclear energy's role in policies and markets, explores the relationships between society and the nuclear sector, and examines challenges facing the nuclear sector"--

With the aim of overcoming the disciplinary and national fragmentation that characterizes much research on nuclear energy, Engaging the Atom brings together specialists from a variety of fields to analyze comparative case studies across Europe and the United States. It explores evolving relationships between society and the nuclear sector from the origins of civilian nuclear power until the present, asking why nuclear energy has been more contentious in some countries than in others and why some countries have never gone nuclear, or have decided to phase out nuclear, while their neighbors have committed to the so-called nuclear renaissance. Contributors examine the challenges facing the nuclear sector in the context of aging reactor fleets, pressing climate urgency, and increasing competition from renewable energy sources. Written by leading academics in their respective disciplines, the nine chapters of Engaging the Atom place the evolution of nuclear energy within a broader set of national and international configurations, including its role within policies and markets.

This report deals with the history of nuclear-society interactions from a social science perspective. Since the beginning of project HoNESt in September 2015, historians have elaborated 20 socalled 'short country reports' covering most European and major non-European countries (e.g. USA). On the basis of this comprehensive collection of individual studies – each encompassing about 60 years of history – we have selected seven countries to be analysed in terms of public perception of, and public engagement with, nuclear energy: Austria, Bulgaria, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States of America (USA). Our findings reveal that each country follows its own nuclear development path with corresponding preference profiles and engagement traditions. However, there are similarities among countries allowing researchers to classify them analytically as either neutral to supportive (e.g. UK) or refusing (e.g. FRG) with regard to deploying nuclear power for electricity production. The varying preference profiles of each country hints at the fact that people refer to a broad scope of heterogeneous evaluation criteria when assessing nuclear technologies. Arguments such as security of energy supply, (dis)trust in decision-makers, climate change, or national prestige play an important role in the debate. Citizens argue from different points of view. Their perceptions and arguments reflect the complexity of the debate comprising environmental, economic, social, and political considerations. Except for the UK and Bulgaria, where protests only occasionally occurred, all countries have faced active civil society opposition against nuclear issues, i.e. public forced communication activities. Pro-nuclear communication processes commissioned by regulators and industry promoters of nuclear power are part of the history of nuclear-society interactions in each country. However, there is only a handful of examples of consultation initiatives, and just one case of a public participation process.

Environmental policy has become an important area of European Union (EU) policy making, even though it had not originally been foreseen in the Treaty of Rome. Its emergence in the early 1970s can be understood as a result of a transfer of the novel policy idea of the environment to the European level. This paper thus inquires into the emergence of a European environmental policy from a diffusion of ideas perspective. Rather than focusing on multi-level policy making it seeks to trace the diffusion of environmental ideas from the level of international organizations to the European Communities (EC) in the early 1970s. It analyzes how and why these new concepts were taken up by the European Communities and adapted to the specific institutional framework of the EC. Starting with a brief introduction into the historical context, the paper first explores the origins of the notion of the environment as a political concept emerging in the context of international organizations at the time. Secondly, an analysis of the first Environmental Action Programme of 1973 will be used to show how the EC conceptualized the environment, including the definition of problems and potential remedies. Thirdly, the origins of these ideas will be traced back to international models, from the UNESCO conference "Man and the Biosphere" in 1968 onwards. In a final step, the paper tries to explain the diffusion and reception of ideas. It examines how these ideas were received by the EC, which actors were involved in this process, and which mechanisms of diffusion played a role. The goal is thus to make a contribution to the debate about the transnational diffusion of ideas.