ABSTRACT
Two political-economy theories – the “pluralistic politics” theory and the “public choice” theory – can advance the theoretical literature of environmental policy-making by revealing how the political economy of governmental institutions and policy processes affects the strategic agendas and choices of businesses, as well as their political activities. The theories focus on key features of businesses’ strategic behavior – namely, it is driven by economic interests, and it is developed and implemented in the context of political institutions. Both theories contribute to an understanding of businesses’ strategic behavior by linking the micro and macro levels of analysis. This chapter reports quantitative data and cases about businesses’ respon-
ses to climate change issues to illustrate propositions derived from the theories. In the context of the principal concerns of this book, therefore, I examine domestic institutional determinants of responses to the environmental problem of climate change. My specific focus is business-government interactions. I thus aim to contribute to our understanding of environmental foreign policy by focusing on the role of business and government actions and their interactions, within an analytic framework that combines microlevel and macro-level concerns. See Chapter 2 by Barkdull and Harris in this volume for a broader theoretical approach. I do not present definitive “tests” of the theories in the most rigorous sense
of that term; rather, I present the theories as complementary theoretical perspectives which offer useful conceptualizations, insights and propositions about how businesses deal with the issues associated with global warming. The analysis uses both data and cases to indicate how the theories can be applied. I thus seek to advance both the conceptual literature about environmental foreign policy-making in general and the empirical-case literature on US responses to climate change issues in particular.
