Environmental Choices

Within a federal system, government agencies and regulatory policies can be fractured -- even at odds with each other. National actors share power with their counterparts in states and localities, as do presidents with Congressional leaders, and bureaucrats with judges. Understanding the broad economic and political contexts of environmental policymaking illuminates the motivations behind policy choices of various interested parties, from the National Park Service and the EPA to environmental activists and members of Congress. Rothenberg utilizes basic economic ideas to provide, not only a fresh look at how the U.S. deals with environmental ills, but a way of thinking about policy making in general.

Lawrence S. Rothenberg is professor of political science at the University of Rochester and director of the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy. He has written numerous articles in public policy, political economy, and political science as well as three previous books covering a broad set of related issues