ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes some of the Reagan administration's regulatory policies and some of their consequences in an effort to understand their implications for the business-government relationship. Deregulation principles will have to be unambiguously enunciated by Reagan's political appointees or else middle managers will find ways to finesse their way around the Reagan restrictions on their policy-making powers and quickly recover the status quo. The President's point of view has rarely been represented in this triad; the alliance operates within a policy-making context which is fragmented, decentralized, and incremental. At the center of corporate efforts to work with state policy makers across the entire nation is the State Government Affairs Council. Many business leaders began to express fears that state governments might look upon the sudden halt to regulation in Washington as an opportunity to expand their own regulatory powers.
