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290 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1953)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0290 and id is 1 raw text is: Atomic Energy and the Democratic Process By ROBERT A. DAHL T O say that we have not yet discov- ered how to deal with atomic en- ergy through democratic political proc- esses may at first glance seem to be one of those pieces of dramatic and mis- leading hyperbole that are regularly in- voked, unfortunately, in the attempt to discuss the social impacts of this new force. After all, the arrival of nuclear weapons, and in the United States the creation of a gigantic government-con- trolled industry to produce them, have assuredly not pushed us to the edge of dictatorship. Despite the shrill warnings of science fiction, the small group of Americans who initially make our atomic energy policies are quite patently not imposing a tyrannical will on a terrified public. What is more, as Senator Jack- son shows in this volume, a body of popularly elected laymen in the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic En- ergy exercises control over policy to a degree that is probably unique in con- gressional-executive relations. Yet as a plain statement of fact, the proposition is scarcely debatable: the political processes of democracy do not operate effectively with respect to atomic energy policy. To say so much is not to pass a moral or practical judgment on the fact. By the standards of anyone save a doc- trinaire and utopian partisan of de- mocracy, the political solution we have arrived at for atomic energy policy quite possibly may be preferable to a larger degree of democratic control. The difficulty is that so few of us can appraise the consequences of the vari- ous alternatives. THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES As with so many other aspects of atomic energy, it is as easy to exagger- ate the difference as to underestimate it. Once we get outside the models of the democratic theorists to the political life of the real world, we discover that polities which we in the West call demo- cratic are in fact systems in which most policy is determined by a relatively small number of people. These people, leaders of one sort or another, act within ill-defined boundaries set by a general public-really a network of publics- that is passive and acquiescent except when its boundaries of tolerance are in- vaded, or at least when some leaders convince the public that this is so. Many individuals normally in the gen- eral public move into and out of the decision-influencing group whenever some particular type of policy is in- volved-farm prices, say, or labor legis- lation or copper imports or a local har- bor improvement. At this point hitherto inactive individuals may become leaders in pressing for some line of policy, or- more likely-attentive citizens who follow this particular series of events with close attention and even some readiness to act in various politically relevant ways. Hence when we say that the political processes of democracy do not operate with respect to atomic energy policy, we refer not to the fact that broadly dispersed popular control is lacking, but rather to these distinguishing charac- teristics: (1) Some of the consequences of atomic energy policy are of incal- culable importance to the most highly 1

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