Citizen involvement in energy decision making. [Nuclear power development]

Technical Report · Tue Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1977

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6157791· OSTI ID:6157791

Curry, M G; Olsen, M E

Citizen involvement in public policy formation is not a new concept, but it is still a highly controversial issue. While few people deny that citizens should have a role in public policy decisions, there is little agreement regarding the nature or extent of this citizen participation role. At one extreme is the belief that the citizen role in government ends at the ballot box. At the other extreme is the belief that citizens should have ultimate control over all public policy decisions. Between the two extremes are roles such as (a) information and education recipients, (b) advisory group members, (c) partners with decision makers, and (d) partial controllers of specific aspects of a policy-making process. Proponents of a more active role for citizens argue that citizens are the best judges of all basic policy decisions and that policies formulated without citizen involvement are likely to meet with resistance and/or be ineffective in meeting people's needs. Opponents of extensive citizen involvement, meanwhile, maintain that citizens have only a narrow and often misinformed view of the need for and ramifications of certain policies. In practice, most citizen involvement efforts have been fairly limited in scope, they have played mostly advisory roles in the public policy-making arena. Little attention has been given, however, to how citizens view the various roles and techniques for implementing citizen influence in public decision making, or to what people mean by success in citizen participation. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to learn more about the perceived effectiveness and appropriateness of various citizen influence techniques. This research focuses on nuclear power decision making because of its visibility as both a local and national issue, and because it is representative of other resource development issues in which citizens are becoming highly involved.

• Research Organization: Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs., Richland, WA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: EY-76-C-06-1830
• OSTI ID: 6157791
• Report Number(s): BNWL-2084(RAP-14)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290600 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Nuclear Energy
293000* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Policy
Legislation
& Regulation
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
320900 -- Energy Conservation
Consumption
& Utilization-- Education & Public Relations-- (1980-)
DECISION MAKING
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCE DEVELOPMENT
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
NUCLEAR POWER
POWER
PUBLIC OPINION