ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the broad and complex issue of environmental regulation, the aspect of the process that has the most impact on environmental policymaking and is, therefore, the most politically contentious. First we will look at the formal procedures by which regulations are adopted, since these procedures are dispositive toward certain kinds of policy outcomes. We will then take up the regulatory arena itself-the turbulent history of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its evolving operational protocols. As the principal institutional embodiment of environmental protection, EPA has historically been the focal point of the myriad social, political, and economic forces that are exerted whenever any substantive environmental issue has been up for public consideration. With the advent of the modern environmental movement, it fell to the EPA to be the workhorse in developing and enforcing rules to carry out new environmental laws. But several factors, including a backbreaking workload, increasingly complex technological challenges, a political climate favoring federalism, and persistent pressures from the business community required gradual modifications of its operational principles. More recently, however, its necessary independence has been eroded by an aggressive and unabashedly business-friendly Chief Executive, President George W. Bush, and its very integrity has correspondingly suffered.
