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Book Review
| Corporate America and Environmental Policy: How often Does Business Get its Way? By Sheldon Kamieniecki. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 348 pp. Tables, figures. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.
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| Most readers of this journal undoubtedly assume that the American business community exerts a disproportionate and negative influence over environmental policy making. After all, during the past six years one of the most pro-business administrations in American history has denied global warming, gutted seminal environmental laws, and failed to connect national security to the imperative of conservation. Yet in this well-researched and provocative book, the political scientist Sheldon Kamieniecki argues that business is merely one of many interests collectively shaping environmental policy in an open, sprawling, and competitive process. |
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Corporate America and Environmental Policy begins with an excellent review of the literature on interest groups, democracy, and environmental policy making. Kamieniecki aligns himself with the minority "neopluralists," who insist that citizens groups and public opinion regularly check the power of the business community, itself often divided. Historians willing to engage political science theory and statistical analysis also will benefit from a chapter on issue framing and congressional agenda setting. The author analyzes business action on 1,124 bills considered by Congress between 1970 and 2000 with the "general intent ... to improve environmental quality or protect natural resources" (p. 87). The business community took no position on nearly 80 percent of the legislation, and was united in support more than in opposition (8.3 percent versus 3.6 percent). According to Kamieniecki's regressions, so many variables influence the agenda-setting process that a general pattern of corporate influence is indiscernible. Further, business neither inordinately influences regulation nor enjoys a particularly high success rate in federal court. |
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Six in-depth case studies form the heart of the book and demonstrate, Kamieniecki insists, that business has a strong but not privileged position in environmental policy making: GE's pending forced cleanup of the Hudson River, acid rain policy, the climate change debate, the failure to amend the pro-industry General Mining Law of 1872, the mêlée over the Florida Everglades, and the Clinton-era imbroglio over the spotted owl and old-growth forests in the Northwest. |
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Corporate America and Environmental Policy offers a necessary corrective to the widespread image of a hegemonic business community. Kamieniecki effectively shows that environmental interest groups, public opinion, and perhaps above all, the president, can resist even a unified business lobby. The author also reminds us that various sectors of American industry are sometimes at odds regarding the environment. The book is clearly and engagingly written. |
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However, the study's parts are greater than the sum of its thesis. To begin with, Kamieniecki's legislative analysis is significantly limited by his (admitted) failure to account for saliency. Moreover, the dataset includes only pro-environmental bills and thus leaves no room for Trojan Horse–like, surreally named anti-environmental measures such as George W. Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative." Finally, historians will wish that the author had considered change over time. Environmental politics were different in 1970 than they were in 2000 (to say nothing of 2006), and thus it is not clear what meaning we can impart from a dataset that flattens the maturation of the environmental movement, the anti-environmental backlash, the triumph of market-oriented ideology, and the rise of corporate-sponsored environmental "expertise" and the increasing tendency and widespread ability of industry lobbyists to soften regulation by securing arcane legal changes, gutting enforcement budgets, and working to replace professional, disinterested regulators with political hacks. |
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By the end, Kamieniecki has retreated somewhat. After reviewing his case studies on natural resource policy, he concludes that "business interests exert a great deal of influence ... however, they do not always get their way" (p. 246). Well, yes. But this modest claim, a far cry from the introduction's bold assertion of overturning the conventional wisdom, moves us little beyond the neopluralist conclusion that business rules, but rules imperfectly. Still, the author has provided a valuable service by demonstrating that the presidency in particular can trump corporate America's undying commitment to the unregulated state. Pessimists simply may wonder whether the presidency and big business can ever be separated again. |
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Derek Hoff is assistant professor of history at Kansas State University. He is currently revising a book manuscript titled "Are We too Many? The Population Debate and Policymaking in the Twentieth-Century United States." |
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