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

Abstract

ABSTRACTPublic 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.