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Agencies must simultaneously weigh technical information along with the political and distributive consequences of their decisions. In a study of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) implementation of federal pesticide regulations, I show that the EPA accounts for both case and constituency factors. I assess the effects of both uncertainty and information in agency decisions. I offer the use of a multilevel model with three types of random effects to capture specific case factors (the crop, the pest, and the pesticide) to account for unobservable heterogeneity in outcomes. The models show that the impacts of uncertainty and information depend on the decision environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerous studies argue that law affects behavior 'expressively'-such as when states create focal points that overcome the coordination difficulties firms face. We argue that governments help firms overcome coordination dilemmas by explicating a preferred strategy for firms weighing investment in voluntary regulation. Firms would prefer to coordinate on a common strategy as a way of reducing the costs of voluntary regulation and increasing its benefits. We test our hypothesis about the efficacy of focal point selection with the European Union's (EU) advocacy of the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) over a rival environmental management system, International Standards Organization (ISO) 14001. EU nations have statistically significantly lower rates of ISO 14001 certification than comparable countries at least in part due to their advocacy of EMAS. These results emphasize the role the state plays in coordinating business behavior even when such policy is simply expressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the flow of federal grants‐in‐aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent roles of state political institutions, political preferences, economic and demographic characteristics, and the task environment. Our central focus, though, is on the relationship between grants and state spending after taking into account those direct effects. We examine the evidence for positive association (a flypaper effect) and negative association (crowding out). We show the different roles for political institutions, political preferences, demographic and economic characteristics, and the task environment in each spending context. Most importantly, we find evidence for a flypaper effect between federal funds and state spending: Federal spending and state spending are positively correlated after accounting for the contribution of the unique factors. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern states increasingly rely on two means of regulating markets: public regulation (by the government) and private self-regulation (by the firms themselves). This study assesses the evolution of the state toward co-regulation by examining, across countries, the incidence of a prominent type of self-regulation: the environmental protection standard ISO 14001. It focuses on technological capabilities as a precursor to the widespread adoption of ISO 14001. Just as technological progress helps to explain differences in economic growth, markets with greater technological attainment (specifically, general purpose technologies) arguably have greater firm-level adoption of self-regulation practices. According to panel data, ISO 14001 is more widespread in countries with greater technological capabilities, but there are diminishing returns to the impact of technology. As such, limited technological attainment remains a key factor that constrains economic growth and limits not only the capacity of the market to regulate itself but so, too, the evolution of the state toward a system of co-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the informational role of interest groups interact with institutions when politicians seek to control the bureaucracy? In 1992, Banks and Weingast argued that bureaucrats hold an informational advantage vis-à-vis political principals concerning policyrelevant variables, and that when it is prohibitively costly to audit, the agency may over- or understate the extent of a public problem. This is less likely to happen if there is a low-cost monitoring technology and if interest groups can monitor the agency's choices. I test this hypothesis using data on bureaucratic statements that estimate the importance of a number of hazardous waste problems from a group of state-level environmental agencies. The results provide evidence for the Banks-Weingast hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a regime-splitting process model of decentralized policy implementation to integrate two theoretical approaches rooted in the tension between local flexibility and national control. The author estimates a model that simultaneously assesses the ability of each approach to explain the outcome it is meant to map onto (case-level discretion for local flexibility and aggregate responsiveness for national control) as well as each approach's extensibility to the other approach's domain. The data for the study come from the implementation of eight primary statutes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional offices. The results are counterintuitive: the national control approach largely explains case-level discretion, the domain of local flexibility, but retains some power for explaining aggregate responsiveness. The local flexibility perspective contributes to both case-level discretion and aggregate responsiveness. Both models work outside their traditional domains, but neither is a sufficient explanation for decentralized policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims that the organizational structure of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to cope with the needs to build comprehensive environmental protection policies. Comparison of the EPA structure with other agencies in the U.S.; Structural choices at the EPA; Argument that the lack of congressional mandate created the structural failures of the agency.

Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well documented in environmental policy. What is less clear is the role jurisdictional or boundary considerations play in determining the implementation of environmental laws. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local regulators are more lenient in their treatment of polluters when the incidence of pollution falls partially on those outside the state. One explanation for such behavior is that regulators take actions to maximize political support. This paper tests this jurisdictional model using toxics release inventory (TRI) data from 1987 to 1996. We find that facilities’ emissions into the air and water are systematically higher in counties that border other states. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that jurisdictional considerations are an important determinant of pollution incidence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]