Unbuilt Dams: Seminal Events and Policy Change in China, Australia, and the United States

Specific events can occasionally be described as turning points in the evolution of a par ticular public policy. Classic examples include the 1964 Civil Rights Act in American civil rights policy and the 1989 decision by Hungarian authorities to allow East Germans safe transit through Hungary into Austria, which culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Why do such seminal events occur? How comparable are explanations in very different political settings? This article draws on the logic of expansion of the sphere of conflict to explain semi nal events. The causal explanation of such events can be remarkably, almost eerily, simi lar, across political systems. To support the argument, Dujiangyan, China, where a large dam/hydropower complex already under construction was suddenly and dramatically aborted, will be compared to established seminal events in American and Australian environmental politics, the refusal to build dams in the Grand Canyon in the 1960s and the rejection of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in 1983.