The Grassroots are Greener: Democratic Participation and Environmental Policies in State Politics.

American environmental legislation cannot be fully explained under traditional interest-group theory, which emphasizes the success of well-financed, organized interests. One alternate explanation holds that the American public accepts a new environmental ethos that is protective of the natural world and human health. In analyzing over five hundred environmental ballot questions, this paper establishes the emergence and persistence of a new environmental ethos as well as a dynamic voting pattern in favor of such environmental protections. As manifest in state-level environmental ballot questions, this ethos emerges in the early 1960s and grows in the subsequent forty years. Such environmental questions appear in higher numbers throughout time, address a wide-range of environmental problems, appear in a variety of states and regions, receive substantial funding, and with few exception are not the simple result of larger economic or political forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]