NIMBY Politics in Japan: Energy Siting and the Management of Environmental Conflict

Negative reaction to undesirable facilities in one’s neighborhood--“not in my back yard”--isn’t limited to the United States. Japanese communities have also resisted siting decisions for power plants, and have often delayed or killed projects for which a legitimate social need exists. NIMBY Politics in Japan is the first detailed account in English of energy siting disputes in postwar Japan. Based on an investigation of a hundred conventional and nuclear plants, the book draws on a wide range of local and corporate sources, as well as interviews with participants, to reveal the bargaining processes involved in social choices and their public policy outcomes. S. Hayden Lesbirel examines why some siting decisions have taken an extraordinarily long time to complete while others have proceeded rapidly. He focuses on the intensity of conflict, relative strengths among participants, and the role of compensation, and he shows how innovative uses of compensation often enable negotiated compromises to be reached. Stressing the importance of dynamic bargaining and creative responses to social and political problems, Lesbirel shows the value of negotiated compromises in Japanese consensual politics.