|
|
|
Book Review
| Environment Inc.: From Grassroots to Beltway. By Christopher J. Bosso. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. xix + 194 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $35.00, paper $15.95.
|
| Christopher Bosso has written the definitive study of the evolution of the major national environmental advocacy organizations from their surge (or in some cases their resurgence) in the early 1970s to the present. He argues that, whatever their failings, they have been essential for the success of environmental policy and for the instilling of critical environmental values in the population at large. His greatest interest is not in environment per se but in the political science question of how these organizations (with some crucial exceptions) have managed to survive and prosper over such a long time. His book therefore makes seminal contributions to the study of environmental politics and to the study of social movements and associational behavior and to the study of American political development writ large. |
1
|
|
In the best tradition of American political development, he delves back in time to analyze the formation of each organization. He does so in order to understand the critical effects that its birth has on its subsequent development. He describes the particular impact upon each caused by the political era in which it was born. Thus, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society still bear significant marks of their birth during the Progressive Era, while Environmental Defense and the Natural Resource Defense Council still exhibit traits attributable to their birth in the 1960s and early 1970s respectively. Then he provides a group portrait of the environmental advocacy community, depicting the differing political and organizational strategies which each pursues. He shows how different members choose either to span the gamut of environmental concerns and political strategy and tactics or to develop relatively narrow policy and/organizational niches. He moves beyond this static depiction to study strategic and organizational dynamics. Indeed his most important conclusion is that the critical variable accounting for the persistence of most environmental organizations, and the demise of some, is the relative ability or inability to adapt to new political and/or organizational challenges. |
2
|
|
Adaptational capacity is the explanation for the most important feat of persistence demonstrated by environmental organizations, the ability of most of them to survive what Bosso terms the contemporary "conservative surge," the political dominance of conservative Republicans at the congressional level since 1994 and the presidential level since 2000. He describes the specific political and organizational challenges posed by this development and the strategic and organizational adaptations that made survival possible. |
3
|
|
This book is a must read for all those who seek to understand environmental policy and politics and the broader analytic principles that undergird the relationship of politics and public policy. |
4
|
|
Marc Landy is professor of political science at Boston College and a coauthor of The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (Oxford, 1994). |
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|