Ian Kelly | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Ian Kelly
Title: Cascading Failures, Course Reversals, and Closures: An Analysis of the Federal Republic of Germany鈥檚 Post-Disaster Nuclear Energy Policy and News Coverage of Nuclear Energy
Majors: Political Science; German Studies
Advisors: Beth Ann Muellner; Jeffrey S. Lantis
Chornobyl (1986 in the Ukrainian SSR) and Fukushima (2011 in Japan) are widely considered the two worst nuclear disasters in history. Their political effects transcended national boundaries, and other countries that used nuclear energy, like the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD), began to rethink assumptions about nuclear power鈥檚 safety. The research hypothesis is that the more serious a nuclear disaster is, the more likely a policy window is to open, and this project studies policy changes in the BRD within six months after these disasters. To examine this hypothesis, this study also textually analyzes 76 news articles for their thematic content, word choices, and bias. They come from the moderately conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the BRD, which is affiliated most with the Christian Democratic Union, and the socialist Neues Deutschland, the newspaper of the ruling party in the German Democratic Republic that has been affiliated most with the party The Left since reunification. This study also uses the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to study dynamic policy processes and changes. The results support the utility of PET and ACF to study these changes, though my hypothesis does not appear to be confirmed nor disconfirmed. The textual analysis seems to demonstrate that negative coverage can become more common after a nuclear disaster, though a newspaper with an existing anti-nuclear bias is less likely to undergo this shift.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
