Local environmental policy capacity: A framework for research

Natural Resources Journal

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 29-51

  Press, Daniel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 22444451652     PISSN: 00280739     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. For reviews of earlier studies, see George A. Boyne, Local Government Structure and Performance: Lessons from America?, 70 PUB. ADMIN. 333 (1992);
2. George A. Boyne, Review Article: Theory, Methodology and Results in Political Science - The Case of Output Studies, 15 BR. J. POL. SCI. 473 (1985) [hereinafter Boyne, Output Studies];
3. Paul Brace & Aubrey Jewett, Field Essay: The State of State Politics Research, 48 POL. RES. Q. 643 (1995);
4. L. J. SHARPE & K. NEWTON, DOES POLITICS MATTER? THE DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC POLICY (1984);
5. Ann O'M. Bowman & Richard C. Kearney, Dimensions of State Government Capability, 41 W. POL. Q. 341 (1988);
6. Tom W. Rice & Anthony F. Sumberg, Civic Culture and Government Performance in the American States (1995) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author);
7. Jeffrey M. Stonecash, The State Politics Literature: Moving Beyond Covariation Studies and Pursuing Politics, 28 POLITY 559 (1996).
8. For reviews of earlier studies, see James P. Lester & Emmett N. Lombard, The Comparative Analysis of State Environmental Policy, 30 NAT. RES. J. 301 (1990).
9. SHARPE & NEWTON, supra note 1, at 171.
10. Vincent Ostrom et al., The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry, 55 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 831 (1961);
11. Michael S. Lewis-Beck, The Relative Importance of Socioeconomic and Political Variables for Public Policy, 71 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 559 (1977); Boyne, Output Studies, supra note 1.
12. EVAN J. RINGQUIST, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AT THE STATE LEVEL: POLITICS AND PROGRESS IN CONTROLLING POLLUTION, 80-103 (1993);
13. DO INSTITUTIONS MATTER? GOVERNMENT CAPABILITIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND ABROAD (R. Kent Weaver & Bert A. Rockman, eds., 1993).
14. Daniel A. Mazmanian & Paul A. Sabatier, A Multivariate Model of Public Policy-Making, 24 AM. J. POL. SCI. 439 (1980).
15. Id. at 442.
16. Richard C. Feiock & Jonathan P. West, Testing Competing Explanations for Policy Adoption: Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Programs 46 POL. RES. Q. 399 (1993).
17. Id. at 414-15.
18. Id. at 400-03.
19. In the environmental context outcomes refer to observable physical, behavioral, and biological indicators. These include, but are not limited to: A. Measures of activity of agencies or other actors: number of permits issued, number of inspections completed, number and types of control devices installed; B. Measures of emissions or discharges into air or water; C. Ambient levels of some pollutants (ozone in air, heavy metals in water); D. Measures of human and/or wildlife exposure to contaminants; E. Direct measures of human health/ecosystem integrity: blood lead levels, lake acidity, species diversity. DANIEL J. FIORINO, MAKING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY 215 (1995).
20. RINGQUIST, supra note 5, at 88-93.
21. For example, to measure the air quality variable, Ringquist uses "percent change in state pollutant emissions, 1973-75 to 1985-87." Id. at 129-30.
22. Id. at 193-94.
23. David H. Folz & Joseph M. Hazlett, Public Participation and Recycling Performance: Explaining Program Success 51 PUB. ADMIN. REV. 526 (1991).
24. Id. at 531.
25. See Boyne, Output Studies, supra note 1.
26. Martin Jänicke, The Political System's Capacity for Environmental Policy, in NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CAPACITY-BUILDING 1, 2 (Martin Jänicke & Helmut Weidner eds., 1997).
27. Another reason to study environmental outcomes is to assess whether public policy and/or mass behavior are positively affecting environmental change, and if so, how. Is regulation successful? Does volunteer activity have an appreciable impact on environmental quality? How susceptible are many environmental problems to resolution by public efforts at changing private behavior?
28. For a brief summary, see Evan J. Ringquist et al., Evaluating the Environmental Effects of Agricultural Policy: The Soil Bank, the CRP, and Airborne Particulate Concentrations, 23 POL'Y STUD. J. 519 (1995).
29. See ROBERT D. PUTNAM, MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK: CIVIC TRADITIONS IN MODERN ITALY 83-91 (1993).
30. Jan E. Leighley, Attitudes, Opportunities and Incentives: A Field Essay on Political Participation, 48 POL. RES. Q. 181, 196 (1995).
31. PUTNAM, supra note 21, at 86-120; Rice & Sumberg, supra note 1, at 15-17; Dietlind Stolle & Thomas R. Rochon, Social Capital, but how??? Associations and the Creation of Social Capital 1-3 (March 1996) (paper presented for presentation at the Conference for Europeanists, on file with author).
32. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, Vol. II., 118 (Philips Bradley ed., Henry Reeve trans., Vintage Books 1945).
33. PUTNAM, supra note 21, at 181-85.
34. Id. at 89.
35. Robert D. Putnam, Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America, 28 PS: POL. SCI. & POL. 664 (1995). Here social capital refers to the ". . . features of social life - networks, norms, and trust - that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives." Id. at 664-65. I also include the concept of civic engagement, whether manifested through traditional measures of political participation (voting, party activity) or civic voluntarism.
36. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital, 6 J. DEMOCRACY 65 (1995).
37. Putnam, supra note 27, at 666-67.
38. STEVEN J. ROSENSTONE & JOHN MARK HANSEN, MOBILIZATION, PARTICIPATION, AND DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 38-160 (1993).
39. SIDNEY VERBA ET AL., VOICE AND EQUALITY: CIVIC VOLUNTARISM IN AMERICAN POLITICS 67-68 (1995).
40. Everett C. Ladd, The Data Just Don't Show Erosion of America's "Social Capital," THE PUBLIC PERSPECTIVE, June/July 1996, at 1.
41. Id. at 5-22.
42. See Rice & Sumberg, supra note 1, at 10-15.
43. Putnam, supra note 27, 666-67.
44. John Urry, Conclusion: Place and Policies, in PLACE, POLICY, AND POLITICS: DO LOCALITIES MATTER? 187 (Michael Harloe et al., eds., 1990).
45. SHARPE & NEWTON, supra note 1, at 1.
46. See RINGQUIST, supra note 5, at 96-103; Ringquist et al., supra note 20; BRUCE A. WILLIAMS & ALBERT R. MATHENY, DEMOCRACY, DIALOGUE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISPUTES: THE CONTESTED LANGUAGES OF SOCIAL REGULATION 10 (1995).
47. JOHN A. AGNEW, PLACE AND POLITICS: THE GEOGRAPHICAL MEDIATION OF STATE AND SOCIETY (1987).
48. Id. at 56-57.
49. SHARPE & NEWTON, supra note 1, at 172.
50. Rice & Sumberg, supra note 1, at 2-3, 11. Rice and Sumberg measured civic culture in terms of civic engagement, political equality, solidarity, trust and tolerance, and social structures of cooperation (membership in professional societies, clubs, church groups). They measured government performance as policy liberalism and innovation, and administrative effectiveness.
51. JEFFREY M. BERRY et al., THE REBIRTH OF URBAN DEMOCRACY (1993).
52. Id. at 166-91.
53. WILLIAMS & MATHENY, supra note 38, at 10.
54. DANIEL PRESS, DEMOCRATIC DILEMMAS IN THE AGE OF ECOLOGY: TREES AND TOXICS IN THE AMERICAN WEST 93-94 (1994);
55. ANDREW SZASZ, ECOPOPULISM: TOXIC WASTE AND THE MOVEMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 150 (1994).
56. 2 VIRGINIA A. HODGKINSON ET AL., GIVING AND VOLUNTEERING IN THE UNITED STATES, 1994-90 (1995).
57. NORMAN J. VIG & MICHAEL E. KRAFT, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE 1990s 5 (2d ed. 1994).
58. DAVID B. ROBERTSON & DENNIS R. JUDD, THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN PUBLIC POLICY: THE STRUCTURE OF POLICY RESTRAINT 9 (1989).
59. Beth W. Honadle, Defining and Doing Capacity Building: Perspectives and Experiences, in PERSPECTIVES ON MANAGEMENT CAPACITY BUILDING 9-23 (Beth W. Honadle & Arnold M. Howitt eds., 1986).
60. Bowman & Kearney, supra note 1, at 342.
61. R. Kent Weaver & Bert A. Rockman, Assessing the Effects of Institutions, in DO INSTITUTIONS MATTER?, supra note 5, at 6.
62. Id. at 6.
63. BERRY, supra note 43, at 257.
64. Anne Schneider & Helen Ingram, Behavioral Assumptions of Policy Tools, 52 J. POL. 510, 517 (1990).
65. Jänicke, supra note 18, at 2.
66. Id. at 8. "Cognitive-informational" refers to knowledge and interpretation of problems. Id. at 7. "Political-institutional" refers to the institutions, rules, and norms governing environmental policy. Id. "Economic-technological" refers to a nation's economic and technological resources. Id.
67. Robert Leonardi, Regional Development in Italy: Social Capital and the Mezzogiorno, 11 OXFORD REV. ECON. POL'Y 165, 171 (1995).
68. Including voluntarism of different sorts - for a typology of voluntarism, see Ram A. Cnaan & Laura Amrofell, Mapping Volunteer Activity, 23 NONPROFIT & VOLUNTARY SECTOR Q. 335 (1994).
69. For example, creek clean-ups are intrinsically worthwhile activities whether many or few local residents participate.
70. WILLIAM FULTON, GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA PLANNING 209 (1991). Proposition 13, passed in 1978, was a constitutional amendment passed by initiative. "Proposition 13 rolled back property tax assessments to 1975 levels, permitted an annual increase in assessment of only 2 percent except in the event of a sale, and, for all practical purposes, capped property-tax rates at 1 percent per year. (A higher rate requires a two-thirds votes [sic], which is very difficult to obtain). Since property tax rates at the time were approaching 2 percent in many parts of the state, Proposition 13 cut local government revenues dramatically." Id.
71. See Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992); Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994).
72. Institutions here include administrative agencies, elected policymakers, and voluntary civic associations.
73. Command-and-control regulations dictate standards or allowable practices required of some industries, for example, the requirement for scrubbers on smokestack power plants. Market incentives are designed to change the economic incentives facing polluters, for example by taxing emissions or offering subsidies for pollution abatement.
74. That is, whether concerns for very different problems (e.g., water quality and habitat preservation) seem to occur together.
75. Boyne, Output Studies, supra note 1, at 485-89.
76. VERBA ET AL., supra note 31, at 54-58.
77. This section's data on open-space land acquisition and voting patterns were collected as part of the author's ongoing research project, Community and Conservation in California. The databases are on file with the author.
78. Daniel Press, Environmental Regionalism and the Struggle for California, 8 SOC'Y & NAT. RESOURCES 289, 294-97 (1995).
79. Two-thirds of the counties consistently (75% of the time) voted only above or below the state average. More formally, chi-square analysis of county ballot approval yielded the following result: G= 1074, df = 57, p < 0.001. The chi-square test measures the difference between expected and observed outcomes. In this case, chi-square tells us that it is highly unlikely that the large differences we see in average county approval of environmental measures is due to chance. See supra note 68.
80. The California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 requires each city, county, and region in the state to divert 25% of its solid waste from landfills and transformation facilities by 1995 and 50% by 2000. CAL. PUB. RES. CODE § 41780 (West 1997).
81. To be sure, in about a quarter of California's counties the federal government is a major landowner (owning 50 to 90% of county land). These counties have less control over local land uses than Central Valley and coastal counties. See supra note 68.
82. There are 58 counties in California. Excluding all counties with 60% or more federal land (11 counties), and correlating per capita income with protected acreage per thousand residents, the correlation is 0.476. That is, income accounts for approximately 20% of the county-to-county variance in protected acreage. See supra note 68.
83. 2 = 0.208, linear regression with log transformed variables. F-ratio = 13.08, p = 0.001. Another reasonable assumption is that, as urban sprawl progresses, residents feel motivated to contain growth through greenbelts, restrictive zoning, and relatively large open space land acquisitions. A regression equation using urban density from the 1990 census (percent of a county's population living in an urban area) and open space acreage shows some relationship. However, the significance of the density factor disappears when "environmental voting" (county average rate of approval of statewide environmental ballot initiatives over the last four decades) is entered into the equation. See supra note 68.
84. See THE STATE OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT (Donald F. Kettl & H. Brinton Milward eds., 1996).
85. HARBINGER COMMUNICATIONS, THE HARBINGER FILE: A DIRECTORY OF CITIZEN GROUPS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES & ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS CONCERNED WITH CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES (1996);
86. CALIFORNIA INST. OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, THE CALIFORNIA HANDBOOK: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO SOURCES OF CURRENT INFORMATION & ACTION, (Thaddeus T. Trzyna, et al., 6th ed. 1993).
87. LAND TRUST ALLIANCE, 1995 DIRECTORY OF CONSERVATION LAND TRUSTS (1995). The Land Trust Alliance defines a land trust as "a local, state, or regional nonprofit organization that directly protects land for its natural, recreational, scenic, historical, or productive value." Id. at v.
88. Interview with Mark Nechodom, University of California, Davis, Division of Environmental Studies, Santa Cruz, California (July 22, 1996).
89. Dennis Rockstroh, Bay Navy Hunts Down Polluters, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, July 1, 1996, at 1B;
90. Trying to Keep the Delta Clean: Citizen Volunteers Look for Violations, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, July 31, 1996, at 3B.
91. Restoration activities include controlling erosion, re-planting, and removing invasive exotic vegetation. See A. D. BRADSHAW & M. J. CHADWICK, THE RESTORATION OF LAND: THE ECOLOGY AND RECLAMATION OF DERELICT AND DEGRADED LAND 73-106 (1980).
92. California Integrated Waste Management Board and California State Board of Equalization. Data refer to change in percent solid waste diverted from landfills between 1990 and 1995, pursuant to a state-mandated reduction of 25% by 1995. A negative number means that a county sent more - not less - waste to landfills in 1995 than it did in 1990. See supra note 66.
93. LLOYD S. DIXON ET AL., THE EFFECT OF URBAN WATER SUPPLY REDUCTIONS DURING THE 1987-92 CALIFORNIA DROUGHT 19-20 (1995) (RAND PM-407-CUWA/CDWR).
94. Locally led preservation of open-space acreages. These include parcels greater than 10 acres acquired by municipal, county, or special district parks and recreation, open-space agencies, or private land trusts. Figures also include local gifts of land to the state parks system; otherwise, state and federal landholdings are excluded.
95. Lester & Lombard, supra note 2, at 316-18; Mazmanian & Sabatier, supra note 6, at 463.
96. For example, solid waste diversion grants from the state of California have been awarded to non-governmental organizations, which, in turn, help develop waste minimization practices for businesses in target counties.