TThe analysis focused on controversies over nuclear energy and nuclear waste management megaprojects, with particular attention to the various manifestations of civic vigilance in high-trust and low-trust societies. Controversies were analysed in a range of contexts and venues. The research examined 1) the role of ideological trust (relating to more abstract entities and higher-level institutions, such as democracy, the state, market, and planning, and their legitimate roles in society) in the emergence of counter-expertise organisations in the nuclear sector (in Finland, France, Germany, and Spain); 2) civic vigilance by the nuclear waste repository host municipalities (Finland and Sweden); 3) discursive framings of nuclear waste repository projects in the news media in Finland and France; 4) discursive framings by experts at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency concerning the problems of nuclear megaprojects; 5) the promises and controversies relating to the current European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) projects in Finland, France, and the UK; and 6) OECD peer reviews and Social Licence to Operate as tools for channelling mistrust to constructive purposes. The main research methods were media and document analysis, and stakeholder interviews.
Two key preconditions were identified for controversies to play a constructive role in megaproject governance. First, megaprojects need contextualisation, that is, the multiple material and non-material elements of these projects need to be aligned. This implies going beyond the narrow ‘iron triangle’ perspective of cost, timetable, and predefined project specifications when analysing project success, and adopting a broader socioeconomic perspective. The analysed framings by OECD-NEA experts draw on these insights but tend to attribute the blame for megaproject problems to external factors, rather than to insufficient contextualisation. The formidable difficulties of the EPR to gain sufficient legitimacy and credibility illustrates the particular challenges of contextualisation in the nuclear sector, characterised by a long history of failed promises, as well as extraordinary safety requirements.
Second, controversies can facilitate contextualisation via various types of ‘civic vigilance’. The conditions for both trust in megaprojects and mistrustful civic vigilance vary across the historically shaped cultural, political, and institutional contexts. Building the necessary trust in nuclear waste repositories and their promoters has been far easier in the Nordic high-trust societies than in the low-to-medium trust societies of France, Germany, Spain, and the UK. Yet, the high-trust context can also undermine mistrustful civic vigilance, as shown especially by the Finnish experience: The leading Finnish newspaper has tended to reproduce government and industry frames in its reporting on the country’s nuclear waste repository megaproject, unlike the French Le Monde, with its more conventional, liberal watchdog role. The Finnish host municipality also has been passive in its partnerships with industry and government. High trust alone does not explain the differences, given the significantly more critical tone of nuclear waste reporting in the high-trust Sweden (finding from earlier research), and the active partnership role of the Swedish host municipalities. As a further illustration of context-dependencies, the strong ideological trust in the state has suppressed the development of counter-expertise in Finland but spurred it in France and Germany, when state institutions failed to live up to the high expectations placed upon them. In the unique Spanish politico-institutional setting, in turn, the weakness of ideological trust in the state has undermined the demand for counter-expertise.
Social Licence to Operate (SLO) and international peer reviews can help manage trust-mistrust-distrust relations and foster constructive mistrust. To do so, SLO frameworks need to integrate the different dimensions of trust, mistrust and distrust, recognise the potential virtues of mistrust and distrust, and nuance its assumptions concerning the virtues of trust. Lessons from OECD international peer reviews invite caution in efforts at ‘hardening’ the tools of ‘soft governance’. Hardening does not automatically make governance and appraisal more effective, and can instead undermine the delicate balance between trust and mistrust underpinning ‘soft governance’.
