ABSTRACT
Through engagement with contemporary reform initiatives that seek to advance more targeted, more rational approaches to incentivizing environmental conservation in agriculture, I evaluate prospects for expanded accountability applied to design, administration, and assessment of agri-environmental policy in the United States. These efforts to advance outcome-based policy designs in agriculture are a self-limiting mode of resistance to dominant structures and existing patterns of public resource allocation because they adhere to a technocratic form of accountability. While democratic accountability can be imagined, skepticism is warranted given historical evidence.
