ABSTRACT
Just how tenuous is the connection between public politics and public policy? The author of a recent attack on the AEC’s Plowshare program flatly states: “There is no mechanism by which the wishes of the people can shape the plans of the AEC.” 1 At the same time Dr. Edward Teller, one of the program’s most enthusiastic proponents, was confessing to me his own reluctant conclusion that in spite of obvious technological promise Plowshare could never succeed because “people believe nuclear explosives to be wicked. ”
