Muddling through a nuclear-political emergency: multilevel crisis management in West Germany after radioactive fallout from Chernobyl

Abstract

Nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl reactor blaze took the West German au thorities completely by surprise. Attempts to control the situation encountered various obstacles: (1) insufficient preparedness; (2) rapidly evolving social conflicts and public demands; (3) complex, interwoven structures of compe tence ; and (4) geographically fluctuating problem loads. Regression analysis indicates that the responses of lower-level administrations depended on the resources available to them, such as scientific expertise, measurement devices and administrative experience. The existence of local hazards and general risk perceptions also influenced crisis management. In particular, this article scru tinizes the organizational crisis evolving from conflicts between federal, state and local governments. A multilevel research design is applied to demonstrate how divergent radiological assessments and ill-defined responsibilities ampli fied the crisis, and how a degree of normalcy was recovered by interlocking the different levels of government.