Restricted democracies : nuclear weapons programs, secrecy, and democracy in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden (1939-1974)

How do nuclear programs affect democratic states? In this dissertation, I attempt to answer this question by investigating the development of nuclear secrecy regimes and their effects on mechanisms of democratic control in the United Kingdom, France and Sweden between 1939 and 1974). I argue that the security implications inherent to nuclear technologies constrains state officials to develop information control regimes to limit their vulnerability. Nuclear technologies, because of their unprecedented destructive potential, have an agentic capacity wish constraints States into developing secrecy regimes. It is not the only mechanisms: external pressure, notably coming from the US, and domestic choices influence the development of those regimes. These regimes of secrecy, in any case, affect modes of democratic control and restrict the field of democratically controllable state actions. Consequently, I argue that nuclear weapons produce restricted democracies.