Spatial Applications and the Public Policy Environment of Biomass Development as an Alternative Fuel.

American politics and policy have traditionally strong ties to the geography of the nation. Alexis de Tocqueville described the impact of the vastness of the American continent and its resources on the American political psyche. Both V. O. Key and Daniel Elazar discussed the importance of geography to American politics and opinion. The complexity of the current policy environment requires the use of techniques that capture systemic characteristics of the environment. Geographic information systems (GIS) software and spatial techniques allow researchers to develop a policy framework to incorporate issues of space and proximity as variables in policy models. These variables are often ignored in conventional research. Their inclusion can result in more accurate, realistic, and comprehensive policy models. This paper examines the potential for systematic incorporation in political and policy analyses of geographic and spatial characteristics. It explores how these geographic and spatial factors have been incorporated into theoretical frameworks of various political science and public policy theorists. It also examines how contemporary theorists have included GIS software and spatial techniques into political science and public policy research questions. This paper finds that the limited application of these GIS and spatial techniques to research questions in political science and public policy has excluded the important variable of location from theoretical consideration. This limitation offers the researcher the opportunity to apply these techniques to questions of location and proximity. Finally, this paper demonstrates the potential for insight gained from the application of GIS and spatial techniques to the public policy environment. The paper engages the specific policy challenge of developing biomass as an alternative fuel considering spatial variation of political characteristics. Using data on members of Congress, their ideological records, party membership, and special interest group ratings of these members the paper demonstrates how research can use these techniques to develop a more complete picture of a specific policy environment. In doing so it acts to bridge the gap between spatial analysis and conventional analytic techniques. The paper will be of interest to scholars and policy makers since it establishes a dialogue of both theoretical and application-based relevance to the field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]