Governance Response to 3.11

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: South Asia, grade: 8.0, Maastricht University (Governance), course: Multi-Level Governance, language: English, abstract: No reaction to a nuclear disaster is good enough. When it comes to nuclear energy there are not definitive answers, government officials and citizens will have different views on the situation. However, at the end of the day the nature of the issue asks for the presence of experts to lead the decision-making process. It is important to notice that the effects of a nuclear crisis cover all human life scenarios, and in consequence the reaction has to be multidimensional. This complicates the response as it requires the participation of more layers of actors.The present paper addresses the situation after the Fukushima nuclear disaster (addressed as 3.11 from now onwards) from the perspective of Multilevel Governance (MLG). The analysis is divided in six main sections. The first section describes the policy problem and the theoretical framework. The second section focuses on the governance structure for the disaster management and the actual response of the officials. The third section analyses the goodness of fit of the MLG framework applied in this case and critically assesses Japan's response. Section four makes a stakeholder analysis, and it is complemented by appendix A, which focuses on the assessment of the quality of collaboration. Finally, section five makes a summary of all the elements described in this paper and presents recommendations on how MLG could be applied on future stages of the ongoing 3.11 aftermath.