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Public Choice Theory Applied to National Energy Policy: The Case of France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Lewis Feldman
David Lewis Feldman
Affiliation:
Political ScienceMoorhead State University
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Abstract

Public choice theory offers a conceptually important means of examining policy decisions and their social and economic consequences in the field of natural resources. Through a public choice analysis of France's ambitious program to nuclearize its electrical industry by the year 2000, I examine the origins, merits and deficiencies of French nuclear policy. Public choice theory's major assumptions – that a policy's costs and benefits are a function of resource abundance and level of development and that a resource's management is shaped by its character and availability – are largely valid. However, the need to reconcile competing social values and to distribute policy benefits fairly may be insufficiently accounted for by current public choice approaches, a fact exemplified by French experience with nuclear power.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1986 , pp. 137 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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