Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/201392 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 1811
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes the nature of democratic development in a nation on the process of introducing nuclear power over the period 1960 - 2017 for an unbalanced panel of 171 countries. Given the involved political process of introducing nuclear power and its political importance, as well as the current tendency of about 30 countries to "go nuclear", this question is both of historic and current interest. We apply a multinomial logistic regression approach that relates the likelihood of a country to introduce nuclear power to its level of democratic quality and nuclear warhead possession. The model results suggest that countries with lower levels of democratic development are more likely to introduce nuclear power. Our results moreover indicate that countries which possess at least one nuclear warhead are more likely to continue to use nuclear power instead of not using nuclear power at all. We discuss these results in the context of the public policy debate on nuclear power, yet beyond energy and environmental issues addressing international relations, conflict, and security issues connected to nuclear energy.
Subjects: 
nuclear power
nuclear warhead
democracy
multinomial logit
panel data
JEL: 
P48
Q34
Q01
C35
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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