The emergence of mistrustful civic vigilance in Finnish, French, German and Spanish nuclear policies: ideological trust and (de)politicization

Abstract

High levels of public trust in institutions and generalised interpersonal

trust in “the unknown other” are generally seen to facilitate

decision-making on nuclear energy and waste. However, earlier research

has highlighted the potential virtues of mistrustful “civic vigilance” and

politicisation as means of enhancing the robustness of policy decisions.

Drawing on expert and stakeholder interviews as well as secondary

material, this article examines the role of the largely neglected ideological

dimension of trust in shaping the emergence of civic vigilance in the

form of counter-expertise in four countries with distinct trust profiles:

Finland as a “high-trust society”, France and Spain as “societies of mistrust”,

and Germany as an intermediate case. The article concludes by

stressing the co-evolution of civic vigilance with ideological and institutional

trust, processes of (de)politicisation, and with the historically

shaped and continuously evolving context. Strong ideological trust in

the state has in Finland hindered the development of mistrustful

counter-expertise, but has in France and Germany provided a foundation

for its emergence, whereas the weakness of ideological trust in the state

has in Spain undermined civic vigilance. The hypothesis that politicisation

– opening up the debate and policymaking to broader publics – fosters

the emergence of mistrustful civic vigilance holds for Finland, and largely

for France and Germany, whereas in Spain, the particular form of politicisation

– as “nuclearisation of politics” – has hampered the development

of counter-expertise.