PUCT EQUILIBRIUM & DYNAMICS US ENV POL

by Robert Repetto (Editor), James Gustave Speth (Foreword)

Although many environmental policy issues remain deadlocked for decades with little movement, sometimes breakthroughs occur abruptly. Why do deadlocks persist? Why do major policy shifts occur infrequently? Is it possible to judge when policies are ripe for change?This book presents new empirical evidence that the punctuated equilibrium theory of policy dynamics fits the facts of environmental policy change and can explain how stable policies can suddenly unravel in discontinuous change. The distinguished contributors to the volume apply the theory to a wide range of important environmental and resource issues and assess case histories in water, forestry, fisheries, public lands, energy and climate some of which resulted in breakthroughs, others in stalemate. They offer insights into the political conditions and tactics that are likely to produce these disparate outcomes. Every professional, activist, and student concerned with promoting (or resisting) change in environmental and natural resources policies will find this up-to-date book an invaluable guide.

305 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Steve Barrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of academic articles applying Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) to assorted environmental policy areas. The idea is that policy surrounding an issue tends to be stable for long periods, generally because the policy is captured within a political subsystem that benefits from the status quo, but can change rapidly based on shifts in public image or changes in policy venue. The first few articles in the collection are introductory and discuss the analytic framework, with one article using a significant amount of advanced math that I did not fully understand (this was the only article where I had this problem). The remaining chapters cover the policy areas of water management, marine fisheries management, timber management, greenhouse gas emissions, automobile fuel efficiency, and livestock grazing on public lands. Some areas have experienced more change than others; the key is that there must be stakeholders who can be convinced that there are pro-environmentalist policy changes that will have more benefits than costs. This is usually not possible, because of the classic political problem where special interests gain the benefits of policy but the costs are distributed to the public at large. The different articles do look at PET from different perspectives, which is interesting. It's apparent from this collection that there was a window of pro-environmentalist policy change that opened up in the 1970s (the first Earth Day was in 1970) but that after a flurry of change at the beginning of that decade there has been a long period of stasis. This book came out in 2006, and reading it in 2022, I had to marvel out how it portrayed a time when politics seemed boring and relatively sane. With all that's going on in 2022, I wonder how much environmental policy is of any concern to anyone. The one insight that PET provides here is that evidence of severe costs associated with climate change should trigger shifts in policy, but even there I have to wonder in this new political era. This book is recommended if you want to read an academic study of politics, and does provide some understanding of how policy works, or at least how it once worked, during a calmer time in political history.