AUTHOR'S REFLECTIONS

SITE FIGHTS: DIVISIVE FACILITIES AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN JAPAN AND THE WEST

March 2010, Cornell University Press

ABOUT

One of the most vexing problems for governments is building controversial facilities that serve the needs of all citizens but have adverse consequences for host communities. Policy makers must decide not only where to locate often unwanted projects, but also what methods to use when interacting with opposition groups. In Site Fights, I gather quantitative evidence from close to 500 municipalities across Japan to show that planners deliberately seek out acquiescent and unorganized communities for such facilities in order to minimize conflict.

When protests arise over nuclear power plants, dams, and airports, agencies regularly rely on the coercive powers of the modern state, such as land expropriation and police repression. Only under pressure from civil society do policy makers move toward financial incentives and public relations campaigns. Through fieldwork and interviews with bureaucrats and activists, I illustrate these dynamics with case studies from Japan, France, and the United States. 

Site Fights has been reviewed in a number of journals and on several blogs, including American Journal of Sociology, Contemporary Sociology, Environmental Politics, Governance, Japan Forum, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Journal of Japanese Studies, Millennium, Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Social Forces, Social Movement Studies, Dispirited Academic, Governance Journal and Nuclear Street. The book has been mentioned by Greenfieldoptimist in a discussion of zoning.

To meet the standards for replication set by Gary King and other methodologists, the data for this book can be found at the Harvard University IQSS Dataverse. 

REVIEWS

Ezra Suleiman, IBM Professor and Chair, Department of Politics and Director, Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society, Princeton University

“Daniel P. Aldrich has written an important book that analyzes the ways in which national bureaucracies interact with anti-project social movements. He explains with impressive empirical evidence why in highly charged policy areas governments sometimes use coercion, whereas in other cases they adopt softer policy instruments.”

Wesley Sasaki-Uemura, University of Utah

“In Site Fights, Daniel P. Aldrich looks at frictions between state bureaucracies and elements of civil society and posits a model for their interactions and mutual influences over time. He argues that states worry primarily about the strength of civil society in the areas they target for their projects. Therefore, civil societies play a crucial role in the development of a country and its democracy.”

Miranda Schreurs, Director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre and Prof. of Comparative Politics at the Free University of Berlin

“Site Fights is a very rich account of facility siting, an issue that takes on added significance in the case of Japan, where population density is high and land is scarce. The study of Japanese society will benefit from what it says about decision making and the influence of and constraints on the power of civil society in Japan.”

Hayden Lesbirel, James Cook University, author of NIMBY Politics in Japan

“Daniel P. Aldrich has produced a fascinating book that investigates how states approach the siting of public nasties comparatively. Integrating the social capital and facility siting literatures, it qualifies the dominant paradigm that states seek to develop controversial projects through open, noncoercive, and participatory strategies. Site Fights will generate a lively scholarly and policy debate about the relationship between the state and civil society in the management of contentious siting politics.”

Barry G. Rabe, Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

“Daniel P. Aldrich provides a fresh look at a familiar and enduring arena of political stalemate. His comparative approach cuts across multiple siting venues and offers important insights that can serve to guide contentious land use decisions.”