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Energy policy participation through networks transcending cleavage: an analysis of Japanese and German renewable energy promotion policies

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Abstract

Developed countries with minimal energy self-sufficiency struggle with lowering their dependence on oil and coal. Security guarantees countermeasures against global warming, and ensuring new energy sources are issues that have driven their choices between nuclear power generation and promotion of renewable energy resources in recent years. Individual nations such as Japan and Germany have been implementing various policies according to their own political and social circumstances, and often these circumstances include discussions and negotiations among diverse actors with different viewpoints and objectives. The networks formed by overcoming the cleavage between the electric power industry and the community consisting mainly of environmental organizations and left-wing political forces could also function as an additional means for environmental actors to break through the impasse formed by the political structure. However, in assessing the effectiveness of the ties that overcome this confrontation, in addition to the existence of ties that connect such communities, it is also necessary to consider whether the influence of environmental actors through intermediary networks extends to the policy formation process. This paper describes the networks involved in the renewable energy feed-in tariff system enacted in Japan after March 2011 and in Germany in the early 2000s and 2012 to investigate such influences. When comparing the energy policies of Japan and Germany, corresponding networks unifying the two communities in both countries were observed in an analysis that emphasizes the existence of ties. However, an in-depth analysis of attitude-based networks and hyperlink networks focusing on policy reveals the predominance of economic and industrial interests in Japan, as well as functional differences even within the same corresponding networks.

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Notes

  1. Graphical Filp-chart of Nuclear & Energy Related Topic 2012 [Genshiryoku/enerugi zumen-shu] of Federation of Electric Power Companies, available at http://www.fepc.or.jp/library/pamphlet/pdf/all.pdf (Access date: December 1, 2013).

  2. All nuclear power plants in Japan have been temporarily closed since May 2012.

  3. Declared in Japan’s Reconstruction Strategy formed in committee session on June 14, 2013. Available at http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/keizaisaisei/pdf/en_saikou_jpn_hon.pdf (Access date: March 8, 2014).

  4. Subsequent to the general election September 2013, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) became the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) in January 2014. As we collected our data during the previous administration (17th legislative period), we use the old acronym (BMU) throughout this paper.

  5. Using figures from emission rates in the 1990s as benchmarks.

  6. Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, 2009. “Statement by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change.” http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/hatoyama/statement/200909/ehat_0922_e.html (access date January 30, 2014).

  7. Statement made by Umweltbundesamt: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/klimawandel/der-europaeische-emissionshandel (Access date: March 1, 2014).

  8. When agreement or disagreement was unclear from the actor statements, we classified these comments as “other.” Furthermore, in the case of multiple sub-issues, we identified a single main issue thread and categorized the comments to summarize the different arguments in Japan and Germany. This classification resulted in some sub-issues being categorized as “agree” and others as “disagree.” In this situation, we categorized the overall comment thread as “other.”

  9. The proceedings, divided by topics as well as in a combined archive are publicly available at http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21.web/bt (access date October 11, 2013).

  10. The proceedings are publicly available at http://www.meti.go.jp/committee/kenkyukai/energy_environment.html (the Project Team), http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/ (the Diet) and http://www.meti.go.jp/committee/gizi_8/index_old.html (others). The source language is Japanese, and the access date is November 31, 2013.

  11. The two-class model should be adopted if BIC were used as the criterion while AIC also chooses the same four-class model. The first class is composed of “100 % of class 1 and 66.1 % of class 2,” and the second class consists of “the remaining items of class 2, class 3 and class 4.” However, we adopted a four-class model since this two-class model only distinguishes between remarking or not and does not provide information about actors’ attitudes.

  12. We identified links written in HTML (.html and .htm) and Javascript (.js). The program script corresponds to a cookie and identifies such links. However it cannot analyze links that are produced dynamically within Javascript’s parameters. The script also does not count redirect commands and frames as transitions of web pages.

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Hartwig, M., Kobashi, Y., Okura, S. et al. Energy policy participation through networks transcending cleavage: an analysis of Japanese and German renewable energy promotion policies. Qual Quant 49, 1485–1512 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-014-0093-9

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