This reading list provides the conceptual framework for our lab class on renewable energy siting decisions. The central puzzle is one you will encounter repeatedly in the data: if renewable energy enjoys broad public support, why do so many individual projects face opposition, and why do elected officials so often fail to defend them?
These readings build from foundational collective action theory through democratic accountability and coalition politics to the applied literature on energy facility siting.
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Siting Renewable Energy Facilities: Collective Action, Democratic Accountability, and the NIMBY Problem
Please complete all readings before the first lab session. Read the assignments in order. Each piece builds on the next.
Total reading: approximately 400-450 pages.
1. Olson, Mancur
The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Read: Chapter 1, “A Theory of Groups and Organizations” (pp. 1-52).
The foundational statement of the free-rider problem. Olson’s core insight—that rational individuals will not voluntarily contribute to public goods when they can benefit without contributing—explains why diffuse majorities (who favor clean energy) are politically weaker than concentrated minorities (who bear the local costs of a specific project). His distinction between small, privileged groups and large, latent groups maps directly onto siting conflicts: a few dozen motivated opponents can outweigh thousands of passive supporters.
2. Kahan, Dan M.
“The Logic of Reciprocity: Trust, Collective Action, and Law.” Michigan Law Review 102, no. 1 (2003): 71-103.
Read: Full article. The legal applications in the second half are less central—focus on the experimental evidence through roughly p. 90.
Kahan challenges the standard Olson model by showing that people are conditional cooperators: they contribute to collective goods when they trust that others will too, and they defect when they perceive free-riding. This is directly relevant to siting—community support for a renewable project can evaporate quickly once a few visible opponents signal distrust of the developer or the process. The reciprocity framework also helps explain why procedural fairness matters so much: communities that feel consulted are more likely to cooperate.
3. Ferejohn, John
“Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control.” Public Choice 50 (1986): 5-25.
Read: Full article (~15 pp.). You can skim the formal proofs; focus on the setup, intuition, and discussion.
A concise principal-agent model of elections. Voters set a retrospective performance threshold; incumbents who fall below it are replaced. The key implication for siting: politicians respond more to the threat of punishment than to the promise of reward. Since local opponents of a wind or solar project are highly motivated to punish, while supporters of clean energy rarely reward politicians for specific siting decisions, the rational strategy is to stay quiet or oppose.
4. Weaver, R. Kent
“The Politics of Blame Avoidance.” Journal of Public Policy 6, no. 4 (1986): 371-398.
Read: Full article (~20 pp.). Very readable, with almost no formalism.
Weaver provides a taxonomy of strategies politicians use to avoid blame for costly decisions: agenda limitation (keeping an issue off the table), deflection (shifting responsibility to another level of government or to regulators), and redefining the issue. When you code what politicians say—or don’t say—about siting controversies, Weaver’s categories provide a useful vocabulary. The politician who says nothing about a proposed solar farm is not failing to lead; they are executing a blame-avoidance strategy.
5. Sabatier, Paul A., Susan Hunter, and Susan McLaughlin
“The Devil Shift: Perceptions and Misperceptions of Opponents.” Western Political Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1987): 449-476.
Read: Full article.
Sabatier and colleagues show that political actors systematically overestimate the power and malice of their opponents—a phenomenon they call the “devil shift.” This cuts both ways in siting conflicts: project supporters dismiss opponents as selfish NIMBYs or anti-science conservatives, while opponents see developers and politicians as corrupt or indifferent to community welfare. This piece should challenge you to examine your own assumptions about why people oppose renewable energy projects.
Note: Please verify the volume and page numbers against your library catalog before locating the article.
6. Devine-Wright, Patrick
“Rethinking NIMBYism: The Role of Place Attachment and Place Identity in Explaining Place-Protective Action.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 19, no. 6 (2009): 426-441.
Read: Full article (~15 pp.).
The most influential critique of the NIMBY label. Devine-Wright argues that opposition to local projects is not primarily selfish or irrational but rooted in place attachment—the emotional bonds people form with familiar landscapes. Disrupting those landscapes triggers “place-protective action” regardless of the merits of the project. This reframing is essential for coding opposition rhetoric: it helps distinguish property-value arguments, aesthetic objections, procedural complaints, and identity-based claims rather than lumping all opposition together.
7. Stokes, Leah C.
Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Read: Chapters 1-3. If time permits, also read Chapter 5 (“Losing in the States”).
The most directly relevant book for this course. Stokes shows that clean energy policies are often passed in a “fog of enactment” when public attention is low, then face organized opposition from fossil fuel interests and electric utilities that mobilize to reverse them. Her evidence on electoral punishment—legislators who vote for renewable energy standards face backlash from opponents that is never offset by rewards from supporters—is exactly the dynamic you will examine in siting decisions.
8. Aldrich, Daniel P.
Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.
Read: Chapters 1-2.
Aldrich asks the question behind all siting decisions: why do unwanted facilities end up where they do? His answer centers on political vulnerability—communities with weaker civil society and less political capacity are more likely to be targeted and less able to resist. This connects collective action theory to distributional outcomes and highlights the political logic behind site selection.
9. Petrova, Maria A.
“NIMBYism Revisited: Public Acceptance of Wind Energy in the United States.” Energy Policy 93 (2016): 149-159.
Read: Full article (~10 pp.).
Petrova distinguishes between different sources of opposition—visual impact, noise, property values, procedural fairness, and distributional concerns—and finds that proximity alone does not predict opposition in a straightforward way. The article is especially useful methodologically because it demonstrates how to operationalize and test competing explanations for opposition.
10. Rand, Joseph and Ben Hoen
“Thirty Years of North American Wind Energy Acceptance Research: What Have We Learned?” Energy Research & Social Science 29 (2017): 135-148.
Read: Full article. Skim the tables and focus on the synthesis sections.
A systematic review of the empirical literature on public acceptance of wind energy. Rand and Hoen organize findings around key variables including proximity, property values, noise, visual impact, community involvement, and economic benefits. The article provides an empirical baseline for interpreting the siting decisions you will code in class.
11. Wolsink, Maarten
“Wind Power and the NIMBY-Myth: Institutional Capacity and the Limited Significance of Public Support.” Renewable Energy 21, no. 1 (2000): 49-64.
Read: Full article (~15 pp.).
Wolsink introduced the influential “U-curve” model of public attitudes toward wind projects: support is moderate before a project is announced, drops sharply during the planning and approval phase when opposition mobilizes, then recovers once turbines are built and operating. The article reframes opposition as part of a broader institutional and procedural process rather than a fixed attitude.
12. Hoen, Ben, Jeremy Firestone, Joseph Rand, Debi Elliott, Gundula Hübner, Johannes Pohl, Ryan Wiser, Eric Lantz, T. Ryan Haac, and Ken Kaliski
“Attitudes of U.S. Wind Turbine Neighbors: Analysis of a Nationwide Survey.” Energy Policy 134 (2019): 110981.
Read: Full article. Focus on the findings and discussion; skim the survey methodology sections.
This large-scale U.S. survey complements Wolsink’s conceptual framework. Hoen and colleagues find that people living near operating wind turbines are generally more positive about them than those near proposed projects. The study also identifies which concerns—noise, visual impact, property values, and procedural fairness—predict continued opposition after construction.