Neal D. Woods

Toxics information disclosure programs have been hailed by some as being among the most successful environmental programs in history. Yet critics have argued that these policies may invite abuse by reducing traditional regulatory monitoring and enforcement, leading to poorer policy outcomes. Leveraging variation in U.S. state toxics transparency programs, we assess these conflicting claims. We find that information disclosure policies are associated with differences in agency monitoring and enforcement actions as well as with emission levels, but that these relationships are conditioned by the severity of the pollution problem. Overall, our evidence suggests that public information policies and traditional forms of regulation are imperfect substitutes, and successfully reducing toxic emissions requires both policy tools working in concert.

This study revisits the environmental race to the bottom thesis in the United States, which argues that states compete for mobile capital by relaxing environmental regulations. Examining state‐level enforcement of federal surface mining and air pollution control regulation over a 35‐year period, we find robust evidence of strategic interaction in state environmental regulatory behavior in the asymmetric manner suggested by the race to the bottom theory. For surface mining regulation, our results also indicate that these dynamics are amplified during Republican presidencies. These findings suggest the continued need to evaluate the efficacy of environmental federalism as it is practiced in the United States, as well as in the many other nations around the world that rely on a similar regulatory model. Race to the bottom dynamics may depress enforcement of environmental protection laws in these contexts, potentially leading to adverse consequences for human health and the environment.

Objective: This study evaluates the role that the economic organization of an industry plays in its ability to successfully pressure government regulators for laxer enforcement Methods: The effect of the industrial organization of the coal mining industry on environmental regulation is assessed using pooled cross‐sectional time‐series analyses of Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act enforcement actions in the American states Results: The findings indicate that as the coal industry becomes more concentrated in a few firms, more geographically concentrated within a state, and more dominated by multistate firms, states enforce environmental regulations less stringently Conclusion: An industry's capacity to exert influence on its regulators may be significantly shaped by important aspects of its economic structure.

Many American states have adopted No More Stringent (NMS) laws, which are intended to curb the ability of environmental protection agencies to issue strict rules regulating pollution. This study leverages variation in scope, restrictiveness, and duration of NMS laws to assess their efficacy in constraining the behavior of environmental regulators. Results from a set of panel data models indicate that NMS laws with broader scope and greater restrictiveness are associated with significantly lower environmental compliance costs. Thus, despite the possibility of strategic behavior by implementing agencies, these laws appear to effective in achieving their proponents’ aims of reducing the regulatory burdens imposed on industry.

Drawing on theoretical perspectives from the literature on childhood socialization and cultural capital, we investigate how the socioeconomic status (SES) background of public administrators shapes their relationships with elected political officials and their staff. Analyses of over 30 years of survey data indicate that American state agency directors from higher SES backgrounds report more frequent interaction with political principals, suggesting that early-life exposure to elite norms and the accumulation of cultural capital facilitate access and ease in elite political spaces. In addition, these administrators report lower levels of perceived gubernatorial influence on major policy changes and agency rules and regulations, indicating the potential for high SES socialization to buttress bureaucratic autonomy and administrative discretion. These findings underscore the importance of class background as a formative social identity, and suggest that scholars should take it seriously in public administration research, particularly as a dimension of social equity and elite political navigation.

Why do environmental regulators allow some facilities to discharge more water pollution than similar facilities in other locations? Drawing on general theories of regulatory decisionmaking, this study assesses four possible reasons: (1) variation in governments’ ability to export pollution to other political jurisdictions, (2) variation in the demographic composition of the neighborhood surrounding the facility, (3) variation in local communities’ ability to mobilize for effective collective action, and (4) variation in subnational political context. Analyses of effluent discharge limits imposed by the U.S. states on two common classes of water pollution indicate that state regulators allow greater discharges when the receiving river crosses state lines, and that they are responsive to a variety of other demographic and political factors. The specific factors, however, often vary across the two pollutants assessed. These results suggest that subnational political considerations may shape the conditions imposed in water pollution permits, and, ultimately, water quality outcomes.

Recent research suggests that the structural design of American state environmental agencies impacts their performance, with agencies that combine environmental protection with other functions like public health or natural resource management regulating pollution emissions less stringently than those that focus exclusively on environmental protection. Using a set of panel data models, this study assesses this claim across several major U.S. environmental programs, including those regulating air pollution, water pollution, and hazardous waste. The results are mixed. Though support for the agency structure hypothesis is found in some models, taken together, the findings tend to refute the notion that an environmental agency’s structure has systematic, predictable impacts on its regulatory performance across programs and regulatory activities. Rather, they suggest that the effects of agency design may be more nuanced and context-dependent than articulations of this theory commonly suggest.

Objective: We examine the relationship between clean energy policies and green job growth.Methods: Using a set of meta‐regression analyses, we assess the green job creation performance of a wide variety of policies in the American states.Results: Our findings indicate that renewable portfolio standards and public benefit funds are systematically associated with increases in green jobs, although the effects of other policy tools are ambiguous at best. Effect estimates in the existing literature are significantly driven by how the dependent and core independent variables are measured.Conclusion: Overall, our findings suggest that some policies may be an effective component of an energy‐based economic development strategy, but that for others a more robust evidence base is needed in order to clarify their effects.

This article examines trends in American state environmental policy scholarship from 1990 to 2019 and assesses the progress that has been made during that time in addressing the numerous deficiencies noted by Lester and Lombard (1990). A survey of more than 300 published articles suggests that researchers have made significant advances in theory and methodology over the last three decades. Yet some core elements of Lester and Lombard's critique continue to apply, and more work needs to be done to reach their goal of a theoretically coherent and methodologically sound body of research. The article concludes by offering suggestions for scholars working in the field.