Open for Business: Conservatives' Opposition to Environmental Regulation
... In 1976 I suggested that the environmental movement was shifting from an emphasis on normative to value change as its fundamental goal, and from personal transformation to societal manipulation as its primary strategy, and I still think that was the case. However, the election of Ronald Reagan was a huge negative shift in the political opportunity structure (POS) from the generally pro-environmental Jimmy Carter administration, which had institutionalized environmentalism via its appointment of numerous environmental leaders to administrative positions but was hampered by energy and economic problems (Layzer, 2012). Reagan's reversal led the movement to renew an emphasis on lobbying, legal action, mobilizing public opinion and other efforts to protect environmental regulations-a strong reformist orientation that helped curtail Reagan's and Bush Sr's anti-environmental agendas to some degree (Layzer, 2012;Turner and Isenberg, 2018). ...
... However, the election of Ronald Reagan was a huge negative shift in the political opportunity structure (POS) from the generally pro-environmental Jimmy Carter administration, which had institutionalized environmentalism via its appointment of numerous environmental leaders to administrative positions but was hampered by energy and economic problems (Layzer, 2012). Reagan's reversal led the movement to renew an emphasis on lobbying, legal action, mobilizing public opinion and other efforts to protect environmental regulations-a strong reformist orientation that helped curtail Reagan's and Bush Sr's anti-environmental agendas to some degree (Layzer, 2012;Turner and Isenberg, 2018). Environmentalism built momentum throughout the 1980s by emphasizing the Reagan Administration's threat to environmental protection (Dunlap, 1987), and was strengthened considerably by the growth of local, grass-roots and environmental justice groups that added more diversity to the movement . ...
... The Reagan and Bush Sr administrations' anti-environmental stances demonstrated the dramatic effect that changes in the POS have had on the environmental movement-in this case stimulating more activism and public support for environmental protection, but by no means successfully curtailing the two administrations' weakening enforcement of existing environmental regulations and opposition to enacting new ones (Layzer, 2012;Turner and Isenberg, 2018). The next Republican Administration, Bush Jr, instituted far more aggressive efforts to undermine environmental protection programs, but due to 9/11 and the resulting national focus on terrorism, environmentalists had less success in countering them (Layzer, 2012). ...
... In the absence of institutional innovation, political conflict over climate policy continues to be structured by the many distinctive features of the US political system, including the country's separation of powers system, its pluralist policymaking institutions, its weak party discipline, its active judicial branch, and such idiosyncratic features as the US Senate's supermajority requirement to break legislative filibusters. These institutional features are not the only drivers of US climate policy conflict, which is also shaped by such factors as the political power of carbon-dependent special interests (Oreskes and Conway 2011, Layzer 2012, Brulle 2020, Mildenberger 2020) and accelerating partisan polarization around climate policy (McCright and Dunlap 2011, Layzer 2012, Dunlap et al. 2016. However, these broader political debates play out within a political arena shaped by the relative absence of climatespecific institutions. ...
... In the absence of institutional innovation, political conflict over climate policy continues to be structured by the many distinctive features of the US political system, including the country's separation of powers system, its pluralist policymaking institutions, its weak party discipline, its active judicial branch, and such idiosyncratic features as the US Senate's supermajority requirement to break legislative filibusters. These institutional features are not the only drivers of US climate policy conflict, which is also shaped by such factors as the political power of carbon-dependent special interests (Oreskes and Conway 2011, Layzer 2012, Brulle 2020, Mildenberger 2020) and accelerating partisan polarization around climate policy (McCright and Dunlap 2011, Layzer 2012, Dunlap et al. 2016. However, these broader political debates play out within a political arena shaped by the relative absence of climatespecific institutions. ...
... It is thus important to distinguish the relatively fragility of some US regulations from the durability of the core environmental laws that still structure US policymaking. Business and right-wing actors have had to undermine climate and environmental policies through long-term, incremental erosion, not outright repeals (Layzer 2012). But this durability is a function of core US political institutions, not a particular feature of US climate governance that mediates climate policy conflict. ...
Climate change poses an existential threat to our planet – but does it require wholesale reorganization of our political institutions? As diverse contributions to this special issue describe, countries have restructured government agencies or developed new institutions to oversee climate reforms. Yet, few such transformations have occurred in the United States, one of the world’s most important cases. Instead, US climate institutions emerged when new mandates and policymaking routines were layered onto existing political institutions. This has had the cumulative effect of creating substantial US climate policymaking capacity in the absence of institutional innovation. When climate proponents have controlled the US presidency, they have mobilized this capacity to center climate change throughout the US executive branch. By contrast, opponents have quickly dismantled climate policy mandates and routines after gaining power. The result has been an unstable variety of climate governance in the United States.
... Based on previous work (e.g., [21,22]), we hypothesize that demographic change-articulated as higher populations, population densities, and population increases-may create political pressure for these markets. We also hypothesize positive relationships between WQT and income (e.g., [23,24]), liberal political ideology [25], hydrological network extent and precipitation (as a proxy for nonpoint source runoff), permitted aquatic ecosystem damage [26], and the prevalence and intensity of agricultural [27] and urban activities (e.g., [28]). Finally, given the extensive recent attention to water quality as public policy issue (e.g., [29]), we seek to test whether waterbody impairment-both current and historicand subsequent, localized regulations are associated with WQT market creation. ...
... We hypothesize that WQT efforts are reactions to current or historic pollution levels [43], and are more likely occur in areas with extensive agricultural activity [44], urbanization [28], environmental impacts and permitting (which may result from infrastructure impacts, regardless of setting; [26]), allied environmental market activity (e.g., wetland and stream mitigation activity; [19,26]), and hydrological regimes that are generally conducive to markets (e.g., experience extreme rain events and possess large river networks and/or water bodies). We also must consider the political and demographic characteristics of areas with markets, including the role of income and political affiliation, which significant work has demonstrated is aligned with enactment and enforcement of environmental policy and the local and state levels [25,[45][46][47]. Table 2 details the data and data sources we use to operationalize each of these factors. ...
... Likewise, a variety of studies have noted the strong role of political ideology in determining environmental policy enactment [25,49,50]. We hope to determine if, and how, dominant political beliefs are correlated with WQT efforts, especially in light of a long history of bipartisan enthusiasm for more laissez-faire, market-based approaches to environmental protection [1,2]. ...
Water quality trading (WQT) programs aim to efficiently reduce pollution through market-based incentives. However, WQT performance is uneven; while several programs have found frequent use, many experience operational barriers and low trading activity. What factors are associated with WQT existence, prevalence, and operational stage? In this paper, we present and analyze the most complete database of WQT programs in the United States (147 programs/policies), detailing market designs, trading mechanisms, traded pollutants, and segmented geographies in 355 distinct markets. We use hurdle models (joint binary and count regressions) to evaluate markets in concert with demographic, political, and environmental covariates. We find that only one half of markets become operational, new market establishment has declined since 2013, and market existence and prevalence has nuanced relationships with local political ideology, urban infrastructure, waterway and waterbody extents, regulated environmental impacts, and historic waterway impairment. Our findings suggest opportunities for better projecting program need and targeting program funding.
... Accounts from federal EPA and state regulators show that early environmental regulation following the EPA's creation in 1970 was robust and aggressive, yet the EPA was a site of competing agendas from its inception (Davies 2009;Landy et al. 1994;Layzer 2012). By the early 1970s, progressive movements achieved significant moral authority, and government accountability dominated U.S. public discourse (Barley 2010). ...
... In response to this period of new regulatory oversight, private corporations organized themselves to better protect their collective interests and shape the emergent regulatory landscape (Layzer 2012). ...
... The 1970s saw a rise in industry trade associations and organizations with the capacity to lobby, make political contributions, issue public comments, and serve on regulatory advisory boards. During this time, corporations mobilized into an "institutional field for shaping public policy" (Barley 2010:780), constructing networks to achieve particular shared interests through political engagement (Davies 2009;Layzer 2012; (Powell 1971). Chemical trade associations started working with public relations firms, following the successful product defense strategies of the tobacco and petroleum industries (Brandt 2007;Michaels 2008). ...
This article examines how ignorance can be produced by regulatory systems. Using the case of contamination from per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), we identify patterns of institutionalized ignorance in U.S. chemical regulation. Drawing on in-depth interviews and archival research, we develop a chemical regulatory pathway approach to study knowledge and ignorance production through the regulatory framework, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Investigating TSCA's operation, we consider why PFAS were relatively recently recognized as a significant public health threat, despite evidence of their risks in the 1960s. The historical context of TSCA's enactment, including the mobilization of the chemical industry, contributed to the institutionalization of organizational practices promoting distinct types of ignorance based on stakeholder position: chemical manufacturers who have discretion over knowledge production and dissemination, regulators who operate under selective ignorance, and communities and consumers who experience nescience, or total surprise.
... In the early 1970s, environmental protection was commonly portrayed as a bipartisan issue, even though Republican politicians' support was significantly lower than was true of their Democratic counterparts (Dunlap & Allen, 1976). The Reagan Era saw the partisan gap grow larger, as the Reagan Administration's embrace of free-market, anti-regulatory ideology led to unprecedented efforts to weaken federal environmental agencies and regulations (Layzer 2012;Turner & Isenberg 2018). This trend escalated in the Nineties as the Republican Party moved farther to the right, leading to a chasm between the parties in terms of Congressional voting and increased partisan polarization in support for environmental protection among the US public (McCright et al., 2014). ...
... This polarization has peaked over climate change, as due to Republicans' long-term embrace of free-market, anti-government ideology, any effort to take ameliorative action such as reducing carbon emissions evokes opposition. Starting with George H. W. Bush (Turner & Isenberg, 2018) (Layzer, 2012;Turner & Isenberg, 2018). ...
The key actors involved in producing climate change denial misinformation are identified and discussed, along with their connections to one another. The first set includes those acting primarily out of economic self-interest: the corporate world, front groups and coalitions, public relations firms, and astroturf groups and campaigns. The second includes those with strong ideological (as well as varying levels of economic) motivations: conservative philanthropists and foundations, conservative think tanks, contrarian scientists, conservative media, denial bloggers and advocates on social media, and the Republican Party. This large ecosystem of actors, some more central than others and their importance varying over time, tend to work in coordination. They have played a major role in hampering effective action to ameliorate climate change in the U.S. and internationally. Various strategies for combatting their misinformation are discussed.
... Whereas environmental groups are key actors in the Democratic Party network, business groups and corporate interests are more influential in the Republican Party, which tend to be less supportive of using government regulations to address environmental problems (e.g., Grossmann and Dominguez 2009;Koger, Masket, and Noel 2010). Moreover, conservative activists and groups more hostile to environmental policies and regulations have gained strength in the Republican Party in recent decades, pushing the party to the right on environmental issues (Layzer 2012;McCright, Xiao, and Dunlap 2014;Turner and Isenberg 2018). ...
... Furthermore, there is some evidence that political control can affect environmental outcomes. Conservatives have successfully relaxed some existing environmental regulations and have prevented or delayed the adoption of new ones by Congress and federal agencies (Layzer 2012). Through the passage and implementation of relevant policies and practices, pro-environmental voting records in states' Congressional delegations contribute to reductions in greenhouse emissions (Dietz et al. 2015). ...
Does the partisanship of officeholders affect environmental outcomes? The popular perception is that Republicans are bad for the environment, but complicating factors like federalism may limit this outcome. Using a dataset that tracks toxic releases over 20 years, we examine how partisan control of executive and legislative branches at both state and federal levels affect environmental policy. Moving beyond the passage of policies or environmental program spending allows us to fully understand the impact of Republicans on the environment. In addition, we take into account structural complications that may shape the relationship between Republican control and environmental outcomes. We find that the conventional wisdom that Republicans are bad for the environment has some validity, but it is dependent on what offices Republican elected officials occupy. More specifically, Republicans significantly affect toxic chemical releases when occupying governorships and controlling Congress. Our conclusions provide further insight into understanding how partisanship affects environmental outcomes, including how partisanship composition across the federal system matters.
... A large body of literature has documented how GHG-intensive incumbent industries mobilized collectively and aggressively against international and US climate policy in the 1990s, organizing through the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) to counter what they saw as a common threat to their business models and even their long-term survival (Layzer, 2012;Levy & Egan, 1998;Newell & Paterson, 1998). Members of the GCC included all the leading firms and branch organizations: the Edison Electric Institute and utilities Duke Energy and American Electric Power; the American Petroleum Institute and the oil and gas majors Shell and BP; and the Association of Global Automobile Manufacturers, GM and Ford. ...
Firms often oppose costly public policy reforms—but under what conditions may they come to support such reforms? Previous scholarship has taken a predominantly static approach to the analysis of business positions. Here, we advance a dynamic theory of change in business policy positions that explains how business may shift from opposing to supporting new regulation over the course of multiple rounds of policymaking. We identify three sets of drivers and causal mechanisms behind business repositioning related to political, policy, and market change. We argue that political mechanisms can shift opposition to “strategic support” for reform, whereas policy and market mechanisms may shift opposition or strategic support toward “sincere support.” We examine the reconfiguration of business interests and policy positions in the context of three decades of US climate politics, focusing on the oil and gas, electricity, and auto sectors. Our dynamic theory of business positions moves beyond the dualism that views business as either opposing or supporting public interest regulation. We thus advance our understanding of why initial business opposition can incrementally turn into strategic or sincere support for policy reform.
... Reaching beyond material concerns, solutions proposed to address the climate crisis require government interventions such as taxes and regulation that have long split Americans ideologically (Campbell and Kay 2014). Capitalizing on this division, fossil fuel and related industries for decades have worked with the conservative movement to advance an antiregulation storyline that has solidified Republican resistance to climate-change science and policy action (Layzer 2012). ...
The rise of climate change on the global political agenda coincided with the growth of partisan polarization in US politics and, in many ways, their trajectories mirror one another. When the climate crisis first began to attract political attention 30 years ago, Republicans and Democrats responded with similar levels of interest and concern. Today, partisan division overwhelms all other aspects of climate-change politics and environmental politics more broadly (Egan, Konisky, and Mullin 2022; Egan and Mullin 2017).
... This all occurred alongside the fraying of the New Deal coalition. Conservative politicians grouped environmental regulations together with other labor and welfare policies as evidence of government overreach (Turner and Isenberg 2018;Layzer 2012). It is clear in hindsight that there was little-short of abandoning its core commitments-the environmental movement could do to stop the partisan sorting of congressional Republicans in the 1980s. ...
When did the personal responsibility frame enter environmental politics? Many Americans take voluntary actions—e.g., recycling waste or buying “green” products—to reduce their carbon footprints. Environmentalist organizations have long promoted this behavior through their communications. Experts, meanwhile, have debated the effects of this framing choice, as individual action alone is insufficient for addressing the climate challenge. Some even suggest that emphasizing personal action depoliticizes environmental issues, weakening the capacity for collective action. Little is known, however, about when and where the personal responsibility frame emerged. We begin to fill this gap by (1) developing a theory about why a personal responsibility frame is expected to have deleterious consequences for environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, (2) tracing the over-time development of the frame by analyzing a multi-decade corpus of Sierra Club magazines, which shows that the emphasis on voluntary individual action accelerated rapidly in the 1980s, and (3) offering some potential explanations for the timing of this shift.
... Conservatives in the US have more favorable attitudes towards corporations than liberals do. For instance, conservatives are more concerned about the needs of businesses (McClosky & Zaller, 1984) and tend to dislike government regulations of corporations (e.g., Layzer, 2012), whereas liberals tend to be more distrustful of corporations (Adams, Highhouse & Zickar, 2010). ...
Prior research using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) has established that political ideology is associated with self-reported reliance on specific moral foundations in moral judgments of acts. MFQ items do not specify the agents involved in the acts, however. By specifying agents in MFQ items we revealed blatant political double standards. Conservatives thought that the same moral foundation was more relevant if victims were agents that they like (i.e., corporations and other conservatives) but less relevant when the same agents were perpetrators. Liberals showed the same pattern for agents that they like (i.e., news media and other liberals). A UK sample showed much weaker political double standards with respect to corporations and news media, consistent with feelings about corporations and news media being much less politicized in the UK than in the US. We discuss the implications for moral foundations theory.
... Especially for environmental policies that may harm economic interests of certain groups, there is a great need for government to provide the knowledge and information to provide policy legitimacy and gain public support (Diamond & Zhou, 2021;Layzer, 2012). Several studies have underlined environmental policies could increase public environmental awareness and literacy by transporting specific environmental knowledge (Panle Jia Barwick, 2020;Rambonilaza & Brahic, 2016;Wang et al., 2020). ...
With environmental problems have become a global concern, large number of environmental policies have been enacted worldwide. Though improving personal willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection is key objective of environmental policies, existing literature overlook the micro relevance of environmental policies and lacks the exploration of the relationship between environmental policies and WTP and related mechanisms. To fill the research gap, this study took China’s energy-related environmental policies as a typical example, drew wisdom from policy feedback theory to develop a theoretical framework, and used CGSS 2018 data to analyse interpretative effect and resource effect of related policies on WTP. The empirical results show that policies have a positive impact on WTP of approximately ¥1.19, but this impact comes with complex mechanisms. On the one hand, policies increase energy knowledge, thus improving WTP (interpretative effect); on the other hand, policies alleviate energy poverty, which further reduces WTP (resource effect). The positive interpretative effect is larger than negative resource effect. The robustness of findings is confirmed by adjusting the samples, measurements and models. This study is among the first to examine the influence mechanism of environmental policies on personal WTP through the lenses of interpretative and resource effects and reveals an unexpected consequence of policies. Accordingly, this study provides policy recommendations for environmental governance.
... 9 On this, see, for example, Okereke and Russel (2010), Paul, Lang, and Baumgartner (2017), Meng and Rode (2019), and Kennard (2020). It should be noted that these adjustment costs may reflect strategic bargaining between regulators and firms (Layzer 2012;Meckling 2019). 10 On this, see, for example, Jones and Levy (2007) and Paul, Lang, and Baumgartner (2017). ...
When do corporations stop ignoring or opposing climate action and start to go green? We focus on the role of corporate boards of directors, which shape firms' positions on internal and external issues of corporate governance and public policy. We argue that board decisions to engage constructively on climate issues are likely to be influenced by the choices and experiences of other firms. Learning, socialization, and competitive dynamics are especially important in highly salient and rapidly evolving policy areas, such as climate change. To test this theory, we construct the network of board memberships for US public corporations and uncover robust evidence that climate innovations diffuse among companies that share board members in common and among companies whose board members interact at separate boards. Understanding the unfolding dynamics of corporate climate action requires examining corporate boards and their social context.
... By contrast, President Trump ran under and was mostly associated with the US Republican party, which has been the party of conservative ideology in the US, with pro-business goals of tax cuts and broadly reducing economic and environmental regulations (Layzer, Kamieniecki, & Kraft, 2012;McCright et al., 2014;Miller & Schofield, 2008)at least in recent decades (Turner & Isenberg, 2018). Trump called global warming a "hoax" (Jacobson, 2016), and in June 2017 announced a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. ...
Government agencies are directed to communicate objective and scientific information to the public, but studies show that political ideology may play a role in how much information governments provide. In this paper I argue that the ideology of a head administrator, and its alignment with agency mission, can restrict the kinds of information that government agencies provide, which may or may not amount to a type of regulatory capture. This impact may also be moderated by the specific media in which the communication takes place. I explore this theory via a case study of the United States Environmental Protection Agency online communication over a period of 32 months, during the years of 2013–2014, under the Democratic Administrator Gina McCarthy, and 2017–2018, under the Republican Administrator Scott Pruitt, via topical terms and document analyses of Twitter posts and web news releases. The information—topics, policies and issues—remain largely consistent across administrations and media channels, but notable distinctions are observed that point to the political ideologies of administrators in office, including a restriction of relevant scientific information on climate change during the misaligned administrator. Moreover, results show differences across media types which may reflect speed and popularity affordances of Twitter compared to website communication. I conclude by discussing the importance of policies to protect against ideological partisanship, and how social media may be better used as tools in government information policy and online communication.
... This divergence is consistent with theories of public opinion suggesting that These explanations both relate to the historic association of environmentally mitigative policies with stringent economic costs through regulatory policies that have been framed and perceived as inhibiting industrial production and economic growth. Such narratives that position policies such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act as threatening economic growth have been used frequently since the Reagan presidency to frame opposition to these policies and create justi cations to weaken them (Layzer 2012). ...
Opponents of climate policy proposals frequently ground their objections in terms of costs. However, it is unclear whether these objections are persuasive to voters considering whether to support such programs. Not only do people have difficulties in understanding large numbers, partisans in particular may place more weight on the originator of a given proposal – supporting it if their own party proposed it, and opposing it otherwise. We test these dynamics using a survey experiment that varied the costs associated with real-world climate policy proposals attributed to each of the two major U.S. political parties, compared to a control group where no cost was made salient. We find little evidence that citizens are systematically sensitive to program cost, and that partisans tend to prefer policies proposed by their own party. The results provide reason for skepticism that cost-based objections to climate spending programs are persuasive at scale, after accounting for partisan cue-taking.
... Siden den gang har en konservativ miljøideologi vokst fram i USA, basert på to grunnleggende verdier: individers frihet fra myndigheters innblanding og økonomisk effektivitet sikret gjennom et fritt marked uberørt av statlige reguleringer. Konservatives anti-reguleringsagenda kom blant annet til uttrykk i en strategi for å omgjøre eksisterende og stoppe nye miljøreguleringer (Layzer 2012). Strategien var saerlig vellykket på klimaområdet, der det ble, og fortsatt er, bortimot umulig å vedta føderale tiltak på grunn av konservativ opposisjon (ibid.). ...
I denne artikkelen analyserer jeg to tilsynelatende uforenlige tendenser i amerikansk klimapolitikk: På den ene siden vedtar delstater klimatiltak i forholdsvis stort omfang, uavhengig av føringer fra føderale myndigheter. På den andre siden benytter mange av de samme delstatene rettsapparatet til å motsette seg klimareguleringer vedtatt av føderale myndigheter. Med utgangspunkt i delstaters søksmålsaktivitet i 2015, som var året da det største søksmålet mot Obama-administrasjonen ble reist, finner jeg at både økonomiske og ideologiske interesser har betydelig effekt på delstaters søksmålspraksis. Effekten av delstatsadvokatens partitilhørighet er spesielt tydelig. Også delstatens fossilavhengighet har innvirkning på valget om søksmålsdeltakelse, men denne effekten er noe mer usikker. Delstater har blitt omtalt som «laboratorier» for demokrati og politisk innovasjon. Min analyse indikerer at delstatsadvokatenes søksmålspraksis representerer en hindring for at delstaters klimaengasjement kan danne grunnlag for føderale klimatiltak.
... Despite the extensive literature on this topic, we still do not have a comprehensive answer to the question of why the coal industry has failed to resist or even slow down its rapid decline despite having enormous political support? An abundance of studies provides answers related to the development and impacts of environmental regulations (Layzer, 2012, Davis et al., 2016, challenges from alternative fuels , interest group influence (Stokes, 2020), and public opinions on non-carbon energy and climate change (Karol, 2019, Ballew et al., 2019, Ansolabehere and Konisky, 2009. These studies provide important glimpses on particular aspects. ...
... Second, this deregulation was largely aimed at telegraphing to fossil fuel industries-oil, gas, and coal-that "America is open for business" (Layzer, 2014). Energy Dominance is, at its core, oriented toward facilitating the extraction of fossil fuels and removing any barriers in the way of this extraction, even when those barriers might be essential for protecting human and environmental health. ...
... The preferences of organized business interests are among the strongest drivers of policy decisions in American politics (Gilens and Page 2014). The opposition of business interests has been a crucial impediment to the advancement of federal policies to provide public benefits across a broad range of policy fields, including labor, environmental, and health policy (Layzer 2012;Hacker and Pierson 2002). At the same time, business coalitions opposing public interest regulation have sometimes split as firms join alliances advocating for policy reform (Swenson 2018). ...
Organized business interests often seek to block public interest regulations, but how they engage depends on institutional context. We argue that in federal systems state policy and politics can have a home state effect on firm preferences and political behavior at the national level. State policies can force firms to absorb regulatory cost, thus reducing the marginal cost of national policies. In addition, firms regulated at the state level have incentives to strategically align with their state governments to avoid future regulatory cost. We test our argument by matching original data on the positions of electric utilities towards the Clean Power Plan and data on ad hoc coalition membership with data measuring state policy stringency and state government positions. Quantitative evidence is consistent with hypotheses: both state policies and state politics influence utilities’ national positions. Elite interviews clarify different mechanisms. Findings underscore how sub-national governments shape national interest group politics.
... proposals for clean air and water legislation mandated that agencies should ignore the compliance cost to businesses (Moe 1989), while President Nixon created a Quality of Life Committee designed to ensure that both costs and benefits were taken account in new rules (Layzer 2012;Tozzi 2011). ...
... The preferences of organized business interests are among the strongest drivers of policy decisions in American politics (Gilens and Page 2014). The opposition of business interests has been a crucial impediment to the advancement of federal policies to provide public benefits across a broad range of policy fields, including labor, environmental, and health policy (Layzer 2012;Hacker and Pierson 2002;Broockman 2012). At the same time, business coalitions opposing public interest regulation have sometimes split as firms join alliances advocating for policy reform (Swenson 2018). ...
Opposition from organized business interests can impede policy reform. Under what conditions are firms incentivized to support reform? We argue that in federal systems state policy and politics can have a home state effect on the national preferences of firms and firms’ coalition membership. State policies can force firms to absorb regulatory cost, thus reducing the marginal cost of national policies. In addition, firms heavily regulated at the state level have incentives to strategically align with their state governments. We test our argument by matching original data on the positions of large electric utilities towards the Clean Power Plan and data on ad hoc coalition membership with data measuring state policy stringency and state government positions. Quantitative evidence is consistent with hypotheses: both state policies and state politics influence utilities’ national positions. Elite interviews help clarify different mechanisms. Our findings show how sub-national governments shape national interest group politics.
... Regional effects for climate adaption are clear from the geographic distribution of our dependent variable (see figure 1). Scholars of environmental action have also frequently found regional effects, with states in the South being particularly unlikely to engage in environmental policy advocacy (Crotty 1987;Lester and Lombard 1990;Layzer 2012). We thus control for region (South, Midwest, Northeast, and West) in our models. ...
Climate change policymaking has stalled at the federal level in the United States, especially since Donald Trump’s election as president. Concurrently, extreme weather, rising sea levels, and other climatic effects have increased the salience of climate change in the mass public and among elected officials. In response, legislators in state governments increasingly introduce and adopt policies associated with climate change. In this article, we evaluate the state of climate change policymaking in state legislatures, with a focus on overall trends in climate mitigation and adaptation innovation and cases of policy retrenchment. We document an increased level of climate legislation introduced in U.S. states since President Trump’s election, particularly in states under Democratic Party control.We evaluate patterns of introduced legislation across the states between 2011 and 2019 and consider the factors associated with bill sponsorship. Our results
demonstrate the increased partisan nature of climate change policymaking in U.S. states.
Although prior research attributes news media coverage of firms to the alignment of firm behavior with societal expectations of appropriateness, the appropriateness of firm behavior is judged through an ideological lens. Therefore, the influence of a firm’s behavior on its news media coverage is likely to be contingent on news organizations’ ideology. Focusing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) as the focal firm behavior, we argue that conservative news organizations are less likely to consider CSR an appropriate firm behavior because conservatives view CSR as privileging progressive ideals and as undermining shareholder interests. As such, we hypothesize that compared with other news organizations, conservative news organizations are less likely to cover socially responsible firms positively. This relationship is likely to be strengthened for firms led by conservative chief executive officers and for firms with poor stock market performance. We examined the coverage of the S&P 1500 firms from 2002 through 2011 in U.S. newspapers and found support for our hypotheses that compared with other newspapers, conservative newspapers report less positively about socially responsible firms and that this effect is strengthened for conservative-led firms. In contrast to what we expected, however, we found some evidence that socially responsible firms with a strong stock market performance are, in fact, covered less positively in conservative newspapers. Taken together, our theory and findings contribute to an understanding of how the news media’s ideological heterogeneity shapes the relationship between firm behavior (in our case, CSR) and news media coverage of firms.
Funding: Y. Dewan received funding from HEC Foundation.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.17237 .
Opponents of climate policy proposals frequently ground their objections in terms of costs. However, it is unclear whether these objections are persuasive to individuals considering whether to support such programs. Not only do people have difficulties in understanding large numbers, partisans in particular may place more weight on the originator of a given proposal—supporting it if their own party proposed it, and opposing it otherwise. We test these dynamics using a survey experiment that varied the costs associated with real-world climate policy proposals attributed to each of the two major US political parties, compared to a control group where no cost was made salient. Our study allows us to disentangle the effects of cost perception and partisan identity on policy preferences. We find little evidence that respondents are systematically sensitive to program cost. Rather, we find that climate policy preferences are shaped by partisan identities, with respondents showing little sensitivity towards increasing costs. The results provide reason for skepticism that cost-based objections to climate spending programs are persuasive at scale, after accounting for partisan cue-taking.
Historically, France has been a relatively centralized country, a tradition going back centuries. Despite political decentralization since the 1980s which has ascribed greater responsibility to sub-national entities, the latter continue to possess limited competences. This has had a notable impact on the articulation of multilevel governance in France and how the national echelon interacts with sub-state entities on environmental/climate policy. Unlike the US, there is broad consensus across the French political spectrum on climate change, even though there remains a difference in terms of prioritizing climate action between the left and the right. Since the 1990s, consecutive French Presidents from different Parties including Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande have sought to enact climate policies which tightly associate ‘territorial communities’ in the achievement of nationally defined objectives. All echelons are legally required to produce specific types of policy frameworks under certain timeframes; the elaboration process, content and evaluation procedures are defined under national law. There is also a legal obligation of compatibility between the different echelons. Such a hierarchical and stratified centralization in France stands as a point of contrast to the US federal system, which tends to rely on ‘cooperative federalism’. The French framework displays both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the effective articulation of multilevel climate governance, and the ways in which sub-state entities are mobilized in the implementation process.KeywordsFrench environmental historyFrench climate politicsMultilevel governanceCities and territoriesFrench centralism
I consider the role of populism and of private property rights in President Trump’s choice to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Despite Trump’s campaign promise, the decision to withdraw was uncertain due to significant disagreement among his advisors, and the perceived but eventually rejected availability of an option permitting the United States to stay in the Paris Agreement while downsizing the commitments made by President Obama. Populist themes are evident in Trump’s June 2017 speech announcing the US withdrawal, including repetitive statements of the need to defend against the machinations of countries which are unfairly taking advantage of the United States, his use of populist tropes such as acting for the people of Pittsburgh rather than the people of Paris, and that the rest of the world is laughing at us. Following significant disagreement among his advisors, the decision to withdraw was in large part due to an active alliance between Steve Bannon, a right-wing populist, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a staunch ally of major extractive industries exploiting natural resources - organizations that had historically been the target of American populism and progressivism. The legal implications of the Paris Agreement to the American coal industry was crucial to Trump’s ultimate decision to withdraw. Two often overlooked factors of particular importance to American anti-environmentalism are the belief among right wing and rural Americans that modern environmentalism is a threat to constitutionally derived rights to control their private property without government interference; and the relatively greater insistence of Americans on individual freedom rather than collective security. Further, the anti-elitism central to both right and left-wing populism had been successfully extended to climate change science and scientists. I conclude that Trump’s decision primarily was based on those factors that were most likely to validate him personally through reelection - keeping faith with both his right-wing populist voting base and his industry funding base. In doing so he actively brought toward the mainstream the anti-environmentalist views of right-wing populists. Approaches that might lessen the voting strength of anti-environmental right-wing populists include recognizing and exploiting the unholy alliance between big industry and right-wing populists; focusing more attention on the significant environmental risks faced by populations that tend to vote for Trump or Trump-like candidates, such as farmers and military families; and respectful sensitivity to constitutionally-derived property rights and similar issues underlying American anti-environmentalism.
The international system is unstable due to the absence of a global regulating body, but countries are sovereign and independent. Although intergovernmental and multilateral organizations exist, there is no world government to regulate the behaviour of nations. In such an environment, states are highly concerned about their security and domestic interest over the idea of climate justice. However, the United States, with a firm hold on the economy, repeatedly refuses to take a suitable stand, from Kyoto to Paris Accord, for reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and endlessly demands the developing world’s engagement in climate action. The US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement shocked world leaders and criticized the stand of President Trump’s backpaddling, which setback climate action. It influences global emissions, at least for the time being, forcing developing economies to reduce their standard of emissions extensively. Significantly, how conscious is the United States of climate justice? How fast will the United States come back in acting the jeopardy of climate change? This article reviews the US action, shifting governments’ policy and stands on climate change from Rio Earth Summit 1992 to Glasgow Climate Accord 2021 conditions. The author has taken 1992 to 2021 period, a blueprint for crucial climate action decided in 1992 led to the formation of UNFCCC, while the United States has reengaged in the Paris Accord in 2021. Also, it tries to understand the shift across federal governments and the influence of local governments on climate change. Furthermore, it sheds light on the obscure image of the United States on carbon trading and tax subsidies for GHGs.
Organized business interests often seek to block public interest regulations. But whether firms oppose regulation depends on institutional context. We argue that, in federal systems, sub‐national policies and politics can have a home state effect on firms' national policy preferences and the lobbying coalitions they join. State policies that force firms to absorb regulatory cost can reduce the marginal cost of national policies, leading to preference shifts. In addition, firms regulated at the state level have incentives to strategically align with their state governments to avoid future regulatory cost. We test our argument in the context of U.S. climate politics, matching original data on the positions of electric utilities toward the Clean Power Plan and data on ad hoc coalition membership with data measuring state policy stringency and state government positions. Quantitative evidence is consistent with hypotheses: both state policies and state politics influence utilities' positions on national climate policy. Qualitative evidence from elite interviews helps clarify the roles of different mechanisms. Our findings underscore the importance of sub‐national governments in shaping national lobbying coalitions.
An initial period known as America’s ‘environmental decade’, spanning the 1960s and 1970s, saw the enactment of far-reaching environmental initiatives by Presidents from both Parties, supported by large bipartisan majorities in Congress. These initiatives operated under a framework of ‘cooperative federalism’, whereby certain minimum environmental standards were established at the federal level, with states enjoying broad autonomy in the implementation process. The rise of neoliberalism as a dominant ideology within the Republican Party has led to gridlock on environmental issues since the 1980s, providing an opportunity for lobbying groups to increase their influence over the US political system. President Obama’s election in 2008 led to hopes of a potential change in paradigm. While Obama succeeded in enacting a number of notable climate initiatives during his first and especially his second term mostly via executive action, Republicans were able to thwart several of his more far-reaching proposals. As a point of contrast, Trump’s Presidency led to drastic climate policy rollbacks involving unfettered fossil fuel development, failed attempts to launch a ‘coal renaissance’, the suppression of climate science and the undermining of clean energy development. Likewise, Trump’s actions ushered in an extreme version of ‘cooperative federalism’, leaving states to do mostly as they pleased.KeywordsUS environmental historyUS environmental politicsMultilevel governanceUS federalismPresident ObamaPresident Trump
The scale and scope of environmental issues can often seem overwhelming and the ability of an individual to affect them can seem remote. However, there are examples of individuals past and present who influence environmental movements, including Rachel Carson and Greta Thunberg.
The political activities of industries associated with the production and consumption of fossil fuels have thwarted state efforts to advance climate policy. Yet research on the role of trade associations that firms use to coordinate their activities remains sparse. Studies of business political activity are generally focussed on the firm level with trade associations typically considered only as part of wider advocacy coalitions. Scholars are still to examine the full range of political activities of trade associations. Using an original dataset built from trade associations’ IRS filings, we find that trade associations engaged on climate change spent $3.4 billion in 10 years on political activities, with the largest expenditure on advertising and promotion, followed by lobbying, grants and political contributions. Our data challenges the prevailing assumptions about the primary political activities of business actors. To explain the variation in spending, we present the findings from a regression analysis and semi-structured interviews. We argue that scholars have for too long failed to account for the political activities of trade associations, which are also one of the most important opponents of climate policies.
Using the theoretical framework provided by the realist school of international relations, this article tries to explain why U.S. climate leadership has been mostly weak, erratic, and unreliable since the early 1990s, and why the attempt on the part of the Biden administration to revive U.S. climate leadership may yield disappointing results. From a realist perspective, flawed U.S. climate leadership may stem from a combination of three factors inherent to the international system: (1) the importance of material wealth in the international balance of power; (2) the willingness of nations to preserve their sovereignty; and (3) the enduring influence of nationalism, which undermines the ability of nations to trust one another.
Here we document an under-studied but important phenomenon that we call ascendant public opinion, which emerges when a new concern is framed as an instance of a broader issue and gains ascendancy over that issue in the public’s mind. We focus on the ever-increasing role climate change has come to play over the past three decades in shaping how Americans think about broader environmental concerns. We show that news coverage of the environment has focused increasingly on climate change over time, while climate change concurrently has come to dominate all other environmental problems in the strength of its association with general environmental concern in opinion surveys. Panel studies provide evidence that the growing correlation between attitudes on climate change and the environment is predominantly due to the impact of the former on the latter. These developments have been consequential: we estimate that Americans’ level of concern about the environment is now both more elevated and more polarized along party lines than if climate change did not occupy its dominant place on the environmental agenda. Climate change is likely just one example of how ascendant public opinion can have important consequences for politics and policy.
In recent years, the Republican Party in the United States has taken on the characteristics of right-wing populism, especially under President Donald Trump. Like most right-wing populist parties, the party under Trump is hostile to climate mitigation. This is reflected in skepticism or rejection of climate science, opposition to multilateral institutions and agreements, aggressive domestic exploitation of fossil fuels, and depiction of climate advocates and experts as ‘elites’ set on undermining the will of ‘the people’. Among the causes of this populism are sharply growing political polarization, especially on climate and the environment, and a sorting of long-standing worldviews along party lines, leading to the election of a president with a nationalist, backward-looking agenda. This leads to drastic policy swings across administrations, among the states, and to gridlock at a national level. This stalemate will continue until one of the two competing coalitions can establish dominance nationally.
In 2019, the environment began to rival the economy among priority issues for the UK public. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to shift this balance in either direction, because the crisis is not only causing serious economic damage but is also highlighting the usefulness of expert warnings. The current work examines the balance between public prioritisation of environment and economy in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nationally representative YouGov sample of 1654 UK adults were presented with two political speeches, either linking COVID-19 to climate and prioritising environment as part of planned economic recovery, or separating the issues and stating that environmental prioritisation is now unaffordable. Most participants (62%) were positive towards the environmental prioritisation speech, and it was more popular than the other speech (which 36% were positive towards). The same proportion of Conservative voters (62%) were positive towards the environmental prioritisation speech (with 50% positive towards the other speech). Higher support for the environmental prioritisation speech was associated with more education but not with socioeconomic status. Voting history and socioeconomic status were therefore less predictive of differences in support for the speeches than expected based on previous research. Consistent with these results is the suggestion that environmental concern in the UK is becoming less tied to social identity and more tied to concern for personal well-being. These findings suggest that foregrounding environmental concerns is politically realistic in post-COVID-19 economic policy, consistent with suggestions from economists and environmental scientists that an environmental focus is feasible and necessary.
Environmental policy advocates are increasingly proposing ‘bundled’ clean energy policies to combat climate change while also creating jobs and transforming the economy. While such strategies may broaden the appeal of climate policies, these broad constituencies create challenges for policy communicators – how do messages about different aspects of the policy, coming from different messenger groups, influence public support for clean energy policies? This study uses a modified conjoint survey experiment (n = 2145) to test how the interaction between message frames (addressing climate change vs. creating jobs) and sources (business, environmental, or labor groups) influenced policy support for clean energy policies. Results show that job creation frames from business or environmental groups were most effective. We find evidence that certain message/source combinations work across partisanship divides: messages that were effective for one partisan group did not backfire – and often also increased policy support – when presented to the other group.
In the USA, a sizable share of the population denies the human causes of climate change and opposes policies to address it. System justification, where individuals fight to protect a socio-economic order, undergirds this opposition. We argue that sexism, representing an investment in gendered hierarchies, contributes to climate change denial and policy opposition. Using nationally representative surveys from 2016 to 2018, we show a consistent relationship between sexism and opposition to climate change beliefs and policies. These results are consistent across measures of both climate change beliefs and support for climate policy. We then show that sexism is correlated with climate denial and opposition to climate policy within a wide variety of subgroups of interest: for both Democrats and Republicans and for groups sorted by ideology, gender, education, and age. We then extend our analysis back in time, looking at data from 2012, finding similar effects prior to the 2016 election. The consistent findings point to the central role that system justifying beliefs about gender play in shaping attitudes about climate change in the USA.
In recent decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become a powerful forum for trade liberalization and regulatory harmonization. OECD members have worked to reconcile divergent national regulatory approaches, applying a single framework across sovereign states, in effect determining whose knowledge-making practices would guide regulatory action throughout the industrialized world. Focusing on US regulators, industry associations, and environmental groups, this article explores the participatory politics of OECD chemical regulation harmonization in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These efforts were conditioned by differential institutional access and resources among stakeholders who sought to shape regulatory knowledge rules. Facing competing European and US approaches to chemical data—a minimum “base set” of test data versus case-by-case determinations—OECD members chose the European approach in 1980. However, US regulatory politics shifted with the election of President Reagan, prompting industry associations to lobby the US government to block the agreement. Examining the micropolitics of these standards in the making, I demonstrate that while long-term structures advantaged industrial actors, ideological alignment with the US government precipitated their decisive influence. The case illustrates the importance of attending to the distinctive politics of international harmonization and the effects on transnational knowledge-making and regulatory intervention.
E-rulemaking, adopted over a decade ago, allows federal agencies to use technology to provide electronic submission of public comment for a rule through the Federal Register. Some scholars suggested that this could create a space for deliberative democracy and improved regulatory outcomes. Yet, has e-rulemaking achieved its goals? The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Net Neutrality Rule received millions of fake public comments submitted by “bots,” many from outside the U.S. The central focus of this exploratory project is to use the e-rulemaking literature as a descriptive baseline to examine original interview data from 32 agency rule-writers and program managers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA, from 2002–2019, served as the managing partner of e-rulemaking initiatives. Our focus is to determine what, if anything, the agency did to identify bots or to screen out fake comments. The findings suggest the 2002 E-Government Act did not anticipate the emergence of bots and thus fails to provide agencies with sufficient guidance on how to identify and treat bots and fake comments.
The evolution of U.S. environmental policy has occurred through a series of three overlapping epochs, with each distinguished by differences in problem definition and policy objectives, implementation philosophies, points of intervention, policy tools, data and informational needs, political and institutional contexts, and key events and public actions. In the third environmental epoch, policy efforts have primarily been framed within the context of sustainability and focus on applying comprehensive, bottom-up policy and planning initiatives. Despite its practical approach for addressing cross-cutting environmental issues, the “sustainable communities” paradigm has fallen short of facilitating a transformation in which U.S. society subsists within the Earth system’s ecological limits. As a result of the sustainability epoch’s policy failures, environmental policy practitioners have increasingly applied the concept of resilience to frame policy discussions. This study draws from resilience theory and applies the environmental epoch framework to conceptualize the emergence of a fourth epoch in U.S. environmental politics and policy, governing for resilience. An examination of the features that distinguish an environmental epoch that centers on resilience contributes to theory and provides practical insight for policymakers by identifying opportunities to prepare for ongoing and unprecedented environmental challenges.
As the ‘golden age of American capitalism’ drew to a close in the 1970s, major U.S. manufacturing companies mobilised politically to defend their long-standing hegemony. Despite notable policy victories concerning labour, regulation, and fiscal policy, the self-appointed ‘mouthpieces’ of U.S. industry failed to cohere around a clear agenda to confront the decline of U.S. manufacturing. By considering the trade positions promoted by the Business Roundtable, this article suggests that corporate elites misdiagnosed their own weaknesses and thus mobilised around policy preferences that quickly became outdated. The political and intellectual legacy of earlier battles ultimately prevented the Business Roundtable from developing or defending a pro-active industrial policy. By evaluating this confused rhetoric and stubborn adherence to antiquated analysis, the article highlights a crucial irony at the heart of modern business activism: the very political vision that had proved so important to their initial mobilisation ultimately hamstrung firms’ efforts to mitigate deindustrialisation.
The empirical focus is centered on the large social movement network created by the Koch Brothers to further their aims of transforming the US. The network was obtained by using the VOSON web crawler given a starting set of known allies of the Koch Brothers. This produced a large directed network with links between units. We propose using the idea of hubs and authorities as another way of considering the roles played by the units within this network. These roles may be more complex than has been realized. We have included an analysis of the core interests for the members of this network.
Cet article examine les origines et l’histoire de l’Antiquities Act de 1906 à la lumière de la controverse suscitée par la création du Monument National de Bears Ears par Barack Obama en décembre 2016, et de la réduction non moins controversée de cette zone protégée par Donald Trump près d’un an plus tard. Outil indispensable qui permet aux présidents américains de créer des monuments nationaux en délimitant des espaces à protéger, l’Antiquities Act fait aujourd’hui l’objet de beaucoup d’attention, suite à son usage répété par Barack Obama. Pour contourner un Congrès hostile et/ou en pleine impasse, celui-ci n’a eu d’autre choix que de recourir à la loi à de nombreuses reprises. Cette utilisation répétée a eu pour résultat de mettre en danger cet outil, seul à même d’améliorer son bilan en matière de conservation. Depuis sa proclamation de Bears Ears National Monument, les Républicains conservateurs des États de l’Ouest ont mené une campagne acharnée contre l’Antiquities Act. Cet article évalue l’importance de cette loi en tant qu’instrument tant indispensable que menacé, qui confère à l’exécutif un énorme pouvoir en matière de conservation.
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