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"A comprehensive analysis of diverse areas of scholarly research on U.S. environmental policy and politics, this Handbook looks at the key ideas, theoretical frameworks, empirical findings and methodological approaches to the topic. Leading environmental policy scholars emphasize areas of emerging research and opportunities for future enquiry. Separated into five distinct thematic sections, the Handbook moves from examining political institutions, to politics and behaviour, policy tools and strategies, climate change, and finally ideas and challenges. Individually, each chapter provides readers with a clear synthesis of current research on a specific environmental policy topic. Together, they offer a thorough review of the current landscape of research in the field. Environmental studies and politics scholars will find the key case studies and in-depth theoretical discussions in this Handbook of great use. It will also be interesting reading for US policy-makers and those working in the media looking for a deeper understanding of the current state of affairs"--

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change requires the adoption of costly policies with often uncertain efficacy and distributional consequences. Because these emissions occur across sectors of the economy—electricity, transportation, and agriculture—and the built environment, and they require action at all levels of government—global, national, regional, and local—there is no single "silver-bullet" solution.

AbstractIn this article, I examine the environmental race-to-the-bottom argument by studying whether state susceptibility to interstate economic competition helps explain which U.S. states engage in environmental regulatory competition. Specifically, I create a susceptibility index using four state economic attributes: overall growth, unemployment, manufacturing growth, and manufacturing employment. Studying state enforcement of federal environmental programs, I find little evidence that states, which are theoretically more susceptible to interstate economic competition are more likely to respond strategically to the regulatory behavior of economic competitor states. These results cast doubt on the idea that the environmental regulatory competition predicted by race-to-the-bottom theory is mediated by intrastate economic conditions.

The federal government adopted several measures during the mid‐1990s to address concerns about race‐based and class‐based disparities in environmental protection. This article examines whether these measures affected the pattern of state enforcement of three federal pollution control laws. Using differences‐in‐differences models to estimate the effects of the federal policy adoption, I find evidence of increases in state enforcement of the Clean Air Act in large African‐American communities, but declines in enforcement in communities with large poor and Hispanic populations. Similarly, there is evidence that state enforcement of the Clean Water Act decreased in poor and African‐American communities, but there were no real changes in enforcement of facilities regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Collectively, the analysis suggests that the federal policy had minimal positive effects on state regulatory enforcement.

In this article, I examine the environmental race-to-the-bottom argument by studying whether state susceptibility to interstate economic competition helps explain which U.S. states engage in environmental regulatory competition. Specifically, I create a susceptibility index using four state economic attributes: overall growth, unemployment, manufacturing growth, and manufacturing employment. Studying state enforcement of federal environmental programs, I find little evidence that states, which are theoretically more susceptible to interstate economic competition are more likely to respond strategically to the regulatory behavior of economic competitor states. These results cast doubt on the idea that the environmental regulatory competition predicted by race-to-the-bottom theory is mediated by intrastate economic conditions. Adapted from the source document.

This paper examines whether state governments perform systematically less environmental enforcement of facilities in communities with higher minority and low-income populations. Although this is an important claim made by environmental justice advocates, it has received little attention in the scholarly literature. Specifically, I analyze state regulatory enforcement of three U.S. pollution control laws-the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act-over the period 1985-2000. To test for disparities in enforcement, I estimate a series of count models and find strong evidence across each of the three environmental laws that states perform less enforcement in poor counties, but little evidence of race-based inequities. [Copyright 2009 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.]

Concerns that interstate economic competition will lead states to relax their environmental regulation, potentially resulting in a race to the bottom, remain commonplace in both academic and public policy debates about state environmental policy. Most of the existing empirical work examining the race to the bottom argument tests the behavioral predictions of the argument. In this article, I focus on the attitudinal predictions. Specifically, I examine whether state regulators express beliefs consistent with what we would expect to observe if a race to the bottom dynamic operates within state regulatory decision making. Studying data from the State Environmental Managers Survey, I find that state regulators are sensitive to the effects that their regulatory decisions have on industry investment decisions and that their agencies are influenced by the regulatory decision making of economic competitor states. Adapted from the source document.

Environmental Regulation and its effect on the economy are of primary concern to public policymakers who are responsible for ensuring the protection of the environment. This study analyzes responses to surveys of senior-level officials working in state environmental agencies and the results of a nationally representative public opinion poll in order to explore the attitudes of these populations toward environmental regulation and the economy. The findings suggest that bureaucrats and the public generally agree on the appropriate level at which businesses should be regulated but differ in their understanding of the role of environmental regulation in industry investment decisions. Exploring such examples of attitudinal congruence can yield insight into the policy preferences of the public and the decisions of regulatory officials. Adapted from the source document.

Researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri have recently completed a national survey of 1,000 adults on attitudes about the environment. The survey asked respondents about their level of concern for the environment and about their preferences for government action to address a wide set of environmental issues. The survey was administered as part of the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 10,000 person survey conducted through the collaborative efforts of a consortium of universities. The 2007 CCES was administered in November 2007 by Polimetrix, an internet survey firm located in Palo Alto, California.

This article examines several of the key hypotheses suggested by the race to the bottom theory in environmental regulation. The research studies annual state‐level enforcement of federal air, water, and hazardous waste pollution control regulation, covering the period from 1985 to 2000. Specifically, the study estimates a series of strategic interaction models to examine whether a state's environmental regulatory behavior is influenced by the regulatory behavior of the states with which it competes for economic investment. While there is clear evidence of strategic interaction in state environmental regulatory behavior, states do not respond in the asymmetric manner suggested by the race to the bottom theory.