Chain Reaction
Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power 1945–1975

Seeks to explain how and why America came to depend so heavily on its experts after World War II and why their authority declined in the 1970s.

Brian Balogh (Author)

9780521372961, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 October 1991

352 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.2 cm, 0.61 kg

'This book is much more than a case study of nuclear power policy in the US … (it) combines historical research over a 30-year period (1945–1975), with an expert understanding of the literature on bureaucracy, on the roles of scientists and the citizenry in the policy process, and on the policy economy of post-industrial policy-making. All students of policy formation thus will find Balogh's book thought provoking. How refreshing it is to find a policy scholar who knows history and can write well.' Political Studies

Path-breaking research into the Atomic Energy Commission's internal memorandum files supports this text's explanation of how and why America came to depend so heavily on its experts after World War II and why their authority and political clout declined in the 1970s.

Acknowledgments
1. Professionalisation and politics in twentieth-century
America: from fission to fusion
2. The promise of the proministrative state: nuclear experts and national politics, 1945–1947
3. Forging an iron triangle: the politics of verisimilitude
4. Triangulating demand: the AEC's first decade of commercialisation
5. The centrifugal push of expertise: reactor safety, 1947–1960
6. The magnetic pull of professional disciplines, issue networks and local government
7. Nuclear experts on top, not on tap: mainstreaming expertise, 1957–1970
8. Nuclear experts everywhere: the challenge to nuclear power, 1960–1975
9. Conclusion: harnessing political chain reactions
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK]