Congressional Self-Interest, Bureaucratic Self-Interest, and U.S. Environmental Policy Implementation

Michael Lyons

The author is Associate Professor of Political Science, Utah State University. An earlier version of this Dialogue was prepared for the 1998 Western Social Science Association Meetings, Denver, Colorado, Apr. 15-19, 1998.

[30 ELR 10786]

Formally or informally, scholars widely assume that political and bureaucratic self-interest largely determines the character of public policy in the United States. Previous research has indicated how the political self-interest of voters, interest groups, Congress, and the President might shape the goals and broad patterns of resource allocation in U.S. environmental policy.¹ This Dialogue complements that previous research. It explores the relationship between congressional self-interest, bureaucratic self-interest, and the implementation of U.S. environmental policy by federal agencies.

The Dialogue begins by explaining how the delegation of policymaking power to environmental agencies might advance the political self-interest of congressional members. It then examines the implications for environmental policy of the traditional, "subgovernment" or "iron triangle" theory of bureaucratic self-interest.² It considers the environmental policy implications of theories that depictbureaucrats as "budget maximizers."³ The Dialogue concludes that Congress has been handing the agencies unrealistic statutory mandates, that environmental agencies have become intensely politicized, and that continuing fragmentation of environmental policy is likely.

If the laws written by Congress set concrete and realistic goals, stipulated precisely how the goals were to be attained, and were backed by sufficient appropriations, then agencies would have little independent power to make policy, and the relationship between self-interest and policy implementation would not be particularly significant. But U.S. laws seldom, if ever, have the characteristics cited above. Instead, one way or another, they enable—or sometimes require—agencies to make fundamentally important policy choices. This Dialogue does not assume that such choices are motivated exclusively by self-interest. Instead, it simply traces the likely effects of self-interest, assuming the effects to be substantially important, and leaves it to the reader to factor in other possible motivations for implementation decisions.

In the study of policy, the self-interest approach is most commonly employed by economists, who focus mainly on economic efficiency,⁴ and in the closely allied "public choice" literature, which for the most part remains quite abstract.⁵ This Dialogue draws most extensively on the U.S. institutional literature that straddles traditional political science and public choice.⁶ These studies usually fail to formalize a self-interest assumption, but all share a general affiliation with the self-interest approach.

Congressional Self-Interest and Power Delegation to Bureaucracy

Scholars conventionally posit that congressional self-interest manifests itself largely in terms of incentive to win reelection.⁷ Assuming this to be valid, the delegation of control over policy might appear contradictory to congressional self-interest, as one might expect congressional members to craft legislation in precise detail, so as to ensure that their constituencies receive the benefits.⁸

Many scholars, however, have argued that broad policymaking delegation to agencies can be a superior reelection [30 ELR 10787] strategy. The foundation of their argument is a core prediction of political self-interest theory: voters will seldom be well informed about the legislative accomplishments or positions of congressional members.⁹ The foundation of the argument that delegation to agencies can be a superior reelection strategy is the self-interest theory prediction that voters will seldom be well informed about the legislative accomplishments or positions of congressional members.¹⁰ For most voters, information about lawmaking comes at a high cost—the process is just too intricate. At the same time, the material benefits of being informed about congressional lawmaking so as to vote for the "best" candidate are usually negligible. The probability of one vote determining the outcome of a congressional race is infinitesimal. Incumbents almost always win U.S. congressional elections, no matter who votes or how much voters know about lawmaking.¹¹

Empirical evidence suggests that most voters respond to these incentives as expected—they remain uninformed. For example, surveys consistently find that 10% or fewer claim to be able to identify any specific legislative accomplishment or vote cast by their representative.¹² As a result, congressional members have little reason to expect that their reelection prospects pivot on their effectiveness as lawmakers. Instead, their reelection strategies would more logically concentrate on things that do catch the attention of the voters—things such as personal appearances in the district, constituent services, personalized responses to constituent communications, and the symbolic dimensions of legislation.

Power delegation to bureaucracy can facilitate such efforts to win voter support, and in several ways. First, it can reduce the time congressional members spend working on legislation, freeing time for district visitation and the like. Secondly, it can detach congressional members from direct accountability for the eventual attainment of policy goals, allowing them to set symbolically alluring, but impractical, goals. Third, it can minimize the public visibility of benefit diversions to organized special interests, giving agencies the discretionary authority to implement the diversions, rather than mandating the diversions more conspicuously in legislation. Lastly, as Morris Fiorina has argued,¹³ delegations might create opportunities for congressional members to serve in the popular role of an ombudsman, fixing bureaucratic snafus, and defending voters against bureaucratic excesses.

Power Delegation in U.S. Environmental Policy

Prior to the 1960s, U.S. environmental policy attracted little public attention.¹⁴ It was largely a concern of natural resource user interest groups. Many congressional members, especially in the western states, depended upon the support of these groups to win reelection. As self-interest theory would suggest, the patterns of power delegation in the environmental policies of this period consistently advanced the interests of these groups.

The natural resource management statutes of 1865-1960 typically established politically defensible yet flexible goals, transferring vast discretionary power over policy to the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service (NPS), and other agencies.¹⁵ The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960, which vaguely required the Forest Service to administer its lands so as "to meet the needs of the American people," is a prime example.¹⁶ In reality, this law gave the Forest Service almost unlimited management latitude.¹⁷ For political reasons discussed below, these agencies had considerable incentive to use such grants of discretionary authority to subsidize resource user groups, and such subsidies became a hallmark of the management policies of the era.¹⁸ Given the public indifference toward environmental protection at the time, this relatively passive, nearly invisible political ingratiation of resource user groups came at little political cost.

With the environmental awakening of the public in the 1960s and 1970s, Congress passed new laws that established a variety of politically popular environmental policy goals. In contrast with the older laws, these new laws stated goals boldly. Virtually all of these goals have, however, proved to be unrealistic, and some, in retrospect, appear ludicrous. For example, the 1972 Clean Water Act Amendments (CWA) stated that "the discharge of pollutants in the navigable waters was to be eliminated by 1985."¹⁹ The 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) declares that:

It is the continuing policy of the Federal Government . . . to use all practicable means and measures to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.²⁰

The new laws of the 1970s typically gave agencies broad discretion to stipulate how their goals were to be achieved. For example, the CWA²¹ tells the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require industrial polluters to install the "best practical" and "best attainable" technology by specified deadlines, but allow the EPA to decide what kinds of technology meet these standards.²² An even more extreme example is the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA),²³ which directs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to [30 ELR 10788] reverse the pending extinction of all endangered species, yet leaves it almost entirely up to the agency to figure out how to accomplish this mission.²⁴

The environmental laws of the 1970s seldom, if ever, carried with them appropriations sufficient to reach their goals, and sometimes only a small fraction of the necessary funding was allocated.²⁵ They were often undermined by continuing resource development programs such as below-cost timber sales, and often catered to either environmental, recreational, industrial, or resource user groups rather than to the broad interests of the public.²⁶ Additionally, the laws transferred to the bureaucracy virtually all of the dirty work—the unpleasant, unpopular, or impossible tasks. The laws forced the agencies to set the real priorities in policy, and leave them with no choice but to cast aside many of the goals they were legally obligated to achieve.²⁷ Thus, the laws enabled congressional members to make symbolic statements of support for a trendy cause, without imposing the sacrifice that would be required actually to attain the environmental goals.

The more recent environmental statutes, beginning with the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977,²⁸ have become progressively more specific.²⁹ One reason for this was that environmental interest groups feared the "capture" of environmental agencies by economic interests, and they thought statutory specificity would innoculate the agencies against capture.³⁰ In addition, the environmental groups grew wary of the possibility that the Reagan and Bush Administrations might undermine implementation of the laws.³¹ Thus, they lobbied the Congress to micromanage policy with detailed technical standards, tight deadlines for goal attainment, and other "action forcing strategies."³² For example, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA)³³ contains 150 deadlines for action.³⁴

But the implementation of these specific mandates has not worked out as the environmental groups might have hoped. Instead, the result has been a quagmire of overlapping and inconsistent statutory requirements that do not add up to coherent policy, and that have become largely unenforceable. Scientific disputes have been one problem, lawsuits delaying enforcement a more serious one.³⁵ The newer laws give the agencies much less discretion than the earlier statutes did. But they continue to associate Congress with the publically popular advocacy of tough environmental standards, and continue to shift the responsibility for attaining the unattainable to the agencies.

Bureaucratic Self-Interest

Rather than trying to survey the entire applicable literature, I will consider four particularly influential conceptualizations of bureaucratic self-interest that apply directly to the bureaucratic use of power delegated by Congress. These conceptualizations appear in the "subgovernment" theory of policymaking, the "issue network" model of policymaking, Aaron Wildavsky's traditional budget maximizing theory, and William Niskanen's public choice budget maxmizing theory.³⁶

The "Subgovernment" Theory of Bureaucratic Self-Interest

In traditional political science, the dominant view of bureaucratic self-interest emerged from the "subgovernment" or "iron triangle" theory of policymaking.³⁷ The "subgovernment" theory depicts policymaking as a highly fragmented process in which a multiplicity of specialized subsystems control particular programs. One example of this fragmentation could be found in the agricultural programs of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, where at least 10 specialized subsystems dominated in 1 sphere of policy or another.³⁸

According to the subgovernment theory, each of these subsystems include three categories of participants (hence the term iron "triangle"). First, there are the congressional members and congressional staffers affiliated with particular kinds of interest group constituencies, usually serving together on subcommittees with jurisdiction over programs that benefit the groups. The agencies that administer these programs occupy the second corner of the triangle. And in the third corner, one finds the interest groups themselves.

Within each of these subsystems, the political relationships are cordial and mutually beneficial. The interest groups offer hearings testimony and other forms of political support to the agencies that administer the programs, defending the program budgets. The interest groups also provide the congressional members with campaign contributions and electoral support, as well as position papers and other resources that help congressional members to justify the existence of the programs.

In return, the congressional members find the votes needed to secure the passage of authorizing statutes and funding for the programs, usually sticking to agency and interest group recommendations in budgeting. For their part, [30 ELR 10789] the agencies remain keenly attentive to interest group input relevant to the operation of programs, often allowing "citizen" advisory panels dominated by groups to set policy directly.³⁹ The agencies also welcome policy input from congressional members within the subsystem, and try their best to honor congressional constituent service requests. Cooperative relationships within subgovernments are also promoted by "revolving door" personnel recruitment, as expertise developed within one part of the subsystem is valued and marketable in the other parts.

This "subgovernment" theory offers at least two important hypotheses about bureaucratic self-interest. First, it suggests that bureaucrats have powerful incentives to cultivate close partnerships with the interest group clientele for their programs. Secondly, it suggests that policy fragmentation advances the self-interest of bureaucrats by providing them with job security. According to the subgovernment theory, these subsystems are stable and almost unassailable politically.⁴⁰ Those external to a subsystem have little to gain from interfering with its operation. They have much more to gain from attending to their own political allies within their own subsystem. Thus, the theory predicts that the subsystems will abide by a norm of live and let live—or "mutual noninterference."⁴¹

The power of subgovernments in the traditional natural resource policies of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was so conspicuous that one common criticism of the subgovernment theory was that it depended too much on reference to natural resource policy.⁴² Widely cited examples of natural resource subgovernmental policymaking include:

1. Reciprocity between the Public Works Committees of Congress, water resource agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and agricultural and industrial water user groups.⁴³

2. The propagation of billions of dollars of direct and indirect farm subsides by an alliance between the agriculture committees of Congress, agricultural interest groups and the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.⁴⁴

3. The virtual surrender of control over public lands grazing allotments and grazing fees to livestock user groups by congressional public lands subcommittees, and the BLM.⁴⁵

Issue Networks

In 1978, Hugh Helco⁴⁶ introduced into the bureaucratic self-interest literature a refinement of the "subgovernment" theory—the concept of the "issue network." According to Helco, issue networks began to appear in response to the increasing complexity of policy and the multifaceted proliferation of participants in the process in the 1960s and 1970s. All evidence suggests that these trends intensified in the 1980s and 1990s.

As Helco acknowledges,⁴⁷ issue networks are not readily visualized. At the nucleus of a typical issue network, one will still find a subgovernment. But this nucleus is immersed in a larger and more complicated tangle of political relationships. Those who mingle in issue network politics include highly specialized interest groups, specialized agencies of state and local government, consulting firms and other private-sector firms, think tanks, and others. In the final analysis, subgovernments still make policy, but they now must appease many new constituencies and deal with many new political cross-pressures. They are now components of larger, more fluid, and more permeable subsystems.

Helco also notes⁴⁸ that issue networks have created a vast policy technocracy consisting of analytical and scientific experts employed as congressional staff members, by state and local government, and in consulting and lobbying firms. To contend effectively with this external policy technocracy, federal agencies also have become technocratic. As a result, there are now fewer low ranking federal bureaucrats performing routine administrative tasks, but an increasing number of technical, analytical, and supervisory positions at higher rank and salary.⁴⁹

Helco's issue network perspective on policymaking has at least one significant implication for bureaucratic self-interest. It suggests that even though the appearance of issue networks may have reduced somewhat the security of specific positions in particular agencies, agency personnel who have technocratic capabilities now have a broad range of excellent employment opportunities, including many in the private sector at salaries that government cannot match. Thus, policies and implementation procedures that require scientific standard setting, cost-benefit analysis, or that otherwise involve the application of technocratic expertise, would appear to advance the self-interest of the federal bureaucrats by improving their overall career prospects.

The environmental policymaking of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s provides a textbook case study in issue network proliferation. One cause of this proliferation has been the incorporation of public participation requirements into many environmental statutes, which literally invited new participants into the process.⁵⁰ In addition, the groups affiliated with the environmental movement have splintered into mutually distrustful and often hostile camps.⁵¹ And new interest groups, ranging from the toxic waste disposal industry to snowmobilers associations, press new demands.

Within the environmental policy issue network, technocracy flourishes. Scholarly research funded through universities and by private organizations, such as the Environmental Law Institute and Resources for the Future, essentially constitutes a newly emerged academic discipline. Scientific assessment of ecological relationships and environmental hazards, risks, and standards—conducted by government and by the private sector—has become the most critical [30 ELR 10790] component in many environmental policy decisions.⁵² And NEPA has created a cottage industry that employs thousands of environmental impact statement specialists.⁵³

Wildavsky's Budget Maximizing Theory

Aaron Wildavsky's The Politics of the Budgetary Process contains a seminal exploration of bureaucratic budget maximizing strategies.⁵⁴ Wildavsky does not formally postulate that bureaucratic self-interest manifests itself as budget maximizing. He does, however, describe agency efforts to maximize their annual appropriations as "natural and inevitable," and his analysis is fully consistent with budget maximizing theories.

Wildavsky characterizes budgeting as an insider's game—a "world of reciprocal expectations that lead to self-fulfilling prophecies." The most important decision rule in this system is incrementalism, in which all decisions for the current year are evaluated as deviations from the previous year, and agencies can generally expect to preserve the base budget carried over plus a "fair share of any new money available."

The central message of Wildavsky's analysis for a budget maximizing bureaucrat is simple—"be a good politician."⁵⁵ Strategic guidelines for bureaucrats striving to become good budgetary politicians include:

1. Cultivating politically powerful clientele.⁵⁶

2. Understanding of the informal norms of the budgetary process. For example, Congress expects agencies to pad their budgetary requests to a degree, and regards such padding as a signal that the agency understands the norms of the process. But when agencies submit grossly inflated or highly deceptive requests, they violate the norms, damaging their credibility.⁵⁷

3. Rationalizing the creation of new programs as "temporary," or as necessary responses to "emergencies." Once established, such programs will almost certainly endure. Or as one congressional member put it: "Is there anything more permanent than a temporary agency of the government?".⁵⁸

4. Capitalizing on the fragmentation of the national political system and the budgeting process itself. The control of spending requires choices, priorities, and overall coordination of the budget, and this is possible only through centralization.⁵⁹

Collaborating with Naomi Caiden, Wildavsky updated his perspective on budget maximizing in The New Politics of the Budgetary Process.⁶⁰ The scholars found that the most essential differences between the traditional and the modern budgetary processes are the growth of entitlements, the recurrence of large deficits, and partisan contentiousness over budgeting. There is now a broader range of stakeholders involved in each decision, and many new uncertainties and pressures on agency budgets. Agencies must build broader coalitions and cope with many new, and often intensely ideological, political agenda.

Wildavsky and Caiden do note that to a remarkable degree, the fragmentation of the system has enabled agencies to survive amidst the partisan strife.⁶¹ But agencies no longer control their budgets readily. Indeed, budgets sometimes seem to be beyond purposeful control by anyone.⁶²

One environmental agency that appears to have suffered from budgetary politicalization is the NPS. The NPS has watched, almost powerlessly, as Congress has year in and year out diverted its budget away from the management of the existing parks to the acquisition of new parks and national monuments of questionable environmental or historical merit.⁶³

Niskanen's Budget Maximizing Theory

Unlike Wildavsky, William Niskanen⁶⁴ formally assumes that the primary goal of every agency is to acquire the largest possible, yet politically defensible, budget. Niskanen acknowledges that bureaucrats are a diverse lot, and they may find utility in power, prestige, salaries, and job security, among other things. But he argues that the acquisition of all of such forms of utility is "positively and continuously" associated with the size of the agency budget. Thus, budget maximizing advances the interests of all within an agency.⁶⁵

Niskanen considers an agency budget politically defensible so long as the total benefits produced by the agency exceed the total costs of its operations. Niskanen argues that agencies are generally able to push their budgets up to this ceiling of political defensibility because they possess superior information about their programs. The result, according to Niskanen, is that agency budgets are economically inefficient because they are too large. Efficient budgeting would allocate funding to an agency only so long as the marginal benefits provided by the agency exceeded the marginal costs of its operations.

Niskanen's theory predicts that policy fragmentation facilitates bureaucratic budget maximizing. As agencies become more specialized, each agency can narrow its expertise, distancing its budget further from effective political control. Meanwhile, policy fragmentation has the opposite consequence for politicians, as they will require more information in order to oversee all agency budgets in the aggregate. Thus, policy fragmentation enlarges the disparity between what agencies know about their own operations and what politicians could ever possibly expect to know.

Randall O'Toole's study of the Forest Service⁶⁶ suggests that budget maximizing explains—better than the subgovernment theory—the operations of at least one [30 ELR 10791] prominent environmental bureaucracy. According to O'Toole, even though the Forest Service has long conducted below-cost timber sales that subsidize the timber industry, these subsidies are not the result of the timber industry capturing the Forest Service. Instead, the Forest Service and the timber industry have often been adversaries, and the agenda of the Forest Service has always been budget maximization.

From 1960-1990, the Forest Service operated under a congressional mandate that tied its budget to its timber harvest rate. To maximize its budget, it maximized its harvest, and to maximize its harvest, it required foresters to cut trees in unprofitable "punishment units." The Forest Service off-set timber industry losses on these units by subsidizing harvests on other units, but the net effect was to make the industry less profitable, as the excess harvests drove lumber prices down.

Critiques of Niskanen's Theory

Despite its apparent power to explain the Forest Service's harvest rates, Niskanen's theory rests on at least two questionable assumptions. First, Niskanen conceptualizes agencies as rather monolithic entities.⁶⁷ In Niskanen's theory, agency directors, and personnel down through the ranks as well, appear to share the same goals and partake equally in the bounty provided by budget maximizing.

There is a sharp contrast between this monolithic depiction of agencies and the depiction of agencies provided by the other, prominent, formal, rational self-interest theory of bureaucracy, Anthony Downs' Inside Bureaucracy.⁶⁸ Downs characterizes agencies as pluralistic entities in which individuals pursue diverse goals and compete for resources, with internal rivalries inevitably being a result. His theory predicts that the overall coordination of an agency is nearly impossible.

Although Downs does not make the argument explicitly, one implication of his theory is that individual utility maximization by bureaucrats may not add up to coordinated budget maximization by an agency. Instead, individual bureaucrats might recognize that an agency budget is a collective good. Rational, self-interested bureaucrats would not normally contribute to the acquisition of such a collective good. Individually, each would capture only a minute fraction of agencywide gain from his or her contribution. It would be more rational for each individual to engage in zero sum competition within the organization for resources, as the expected payoff from such efforts should normally be higher than the payoffs from contributions to collective action.

A second questionable assumption underpinning Niskanen's theory is that agencies are funded by "single sponsors," such as a particular congressional committee.⁶⁹ Though technically this has never been true in the U.S. context, it approximates the budgetary relationships in subgovernments fairly well.

Wildavsky and Caiden's description of the modern budgetary process, however, suggests that the "single sponsor" concept now has diminished validity in the United States. Modern budgeting involves a broader range of participants, and it has become deeply politicized. In the modern context, it would appear to be difficult for an agency to sell Congress on the need for an excessively large, socially inefficient budget, unless the budget advanced some congressional agenda. Clearly, the apparent excesses in Forest Service budgets from 1960-1990 were tied to such an agenda.⁷⁰

Conclusion

The literature surveyed here suggests that congressional and bureaucratic self-interest in environmental policy implementation has complex ramifications in the modern era—more complex than in the past. Prior to the 1970s inenvironmental policy, Congress had little political motivation to concern itself with anything other than the demands of resource user groups. By giving the traditional resource management agencies substantial autonomy, and establishing implicit budgetary incentives for the agencies to serve the user groups, Congress was able to provide a steady stream of pork barrel benefits to the groups in a way that minimized congressional accountability for waste. The agencies appear to have prospered in this era. So long as they kept their user group clientele satisfied and obeyed the norms of the budgetary process, they remained largely independent of external control. Agency budgets that were padded and socially inefficient were probably the norm.

In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, however, the game changed. The game was still politics, but the agencies no longer wrote so many of the rules. Embracing the suddenly popular goals of the environmental movement, Congress created EPA, and gave existing agencies new legal mandates designed to advance environmental goals. This set up conflicts between agencies and within them. Scientific controversies and technological disputes bogged down the agencies further. Growing federal deficits led Congress to look more carefully into nooks and crannies of subcommittee authorizations. Ever proliferating environmental groups scrutinized agency operations more closely, while resource user and industrial groups organized in a backlash against environmentalism. The western land management agencies became a battleground in a culture war.

In the future, projected federal budget surpluses should alleviate one source of pressure on the agencies, but otherwise there is every reason to believe that the contention over environmental policy will continue to escalate. Marginally larger budgets can do little to resolve zero-sum conflicts between the resource claims of owls and lumber mills. Almost every agency decision of any significance will encounter vocal opposition. In these circumstances, simple alliances with clientele groups can no longer provide agencies with the political cover they need.

Instead, the most prominent manifestation of agency self-interest will probably continue to be policy fragmentation. By creating multiple access points and overlapping programs, fragmentation helps the agencies to cope with diverse and often irreconcilable interest group demands. It complicates matters for congressional members, think tank analysts, potentially hostile interest groups, or anyone else external to an agency who might want to assess agency operations or challenge them politically. In addition, fragmentation creates good jobs for environmental policy specialists [30 ELR 10792] on the fringes of government, jobs that agency personnel often expect to hold in the future.

This conclusion—that agency self-interest is likely to result in further policy fragmentation—should trouble environmentalists, who almost uniformly subscribe to the belief "that everything is connected to everything else," and that government must follow a "holistic" approach to problem-solving that respects the delicacy of ecological interdependence.⁷¹ In this vein, political scientists Michael Kraft and Norman Vig⁷² conclude that:

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to more rational and effective environmental policy making at present is absence of any mechanism for integrating and coordinating policy actions on the basis of an overall strategy or set of priorities.⁷³

This Dialogue has one central implication for environmental interest group political strategy. It indicates that many of the serious problems in environmental policy implementation have political origins—in the Congress and in the groups themselves. Environmental agencies may appear to be ineffective, but they are being asked to do the impossible. They are caught between uncompromising interest groups that voice unreasonable demands; a policy technocracy that inconclusively debates risks and standards; and a Congress that establishes unrealistic goals, mindlessly proliferates mandates, and yet reserves most of its budget for higher political priorities such as entitlements. It should not come as a surprise that there are many informal indications of low morale in EPA, the NPS, and the Forest Service.⁷⁴

Clearly, many environmentalists understand that they need to gain more control over political decisionmaking in Congress, as the pace of environmental lobbying on Capitol Hill accelerates yearly. But environmentalists sometimes seem to pursue self-defeating political strategies. Lobbying Congress vigorously does not necessarily amount to the exercise of control over policy outcomes. Increasingly splintered, the environmental movement has a diffuse agenda that invites policy fragmentation. The movement presses endlessly for new programs, but the programs do not amount to results.

To establish greater control over policy outcomes, environmentalists must recognize the fragmentation problem and establish greater discipline within their own ranks. They need to build internal consensus over policy priorities. They must resist the allure of promises that Congress makes but never intends to keep. They must not equate political or administrative proceedings that superficially give them input with policy that genuinely furthers their objectives. They must try to introduce greater coherence and realism into their expectations, striving for laws that give the agencies at least a fighting chance to serve the broader interests of the nation.

1. Michael Lyons, Political Self-Interest and U.S. Environmental Policy, 39 NAT. RESOURCES J. 271 (1999). Throughout this Dialogue I define "environmental policy" very broadly to include any program established primarily to develop, manage, or preserve natural resources or the terrestrial ecology. Traditional, ecologically destructive, natural resource development programs qualify as "environmental policy" by this definition, though unquestionably many would consider them to be bad environmental policies.

2. See DOUGLAS CATER. POWER IN WASHINGTON (1964).

3. See, e.g., WILLIAM A. NISKANEN JR., BUREAUCRACY: SERVANT OR MASTER? (1973); AARON WILDAVSKY, THE POLITICS OF THE BUDGETARY PROCESS (1964).

4. See, e.g., ALLEN V. KNEESE & CHARLES L. SCHULTZE, POLLUTION, PRICES, AND PUBLIC POLICY (1975); TOM TIETENBERG, ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS (1992); BARRY C. FIELD, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS (1994); A. Myrick Freeman III, Economics, Incentives, and Environmental Regulation, in ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE 1990S: REFORM OR REACTION? (Norman J. Vig & Michael E. Kraft eds., 3d ed. 1997).

5. See, e.g., KENNETH J. ARROW, SOCIAL CHOICE AND INDIVIDUAL VALUES (1951); JAMES M. BUCHANAN & GORDON TULLOCK, THE CALCULUS OF CONSENT (1971); WILLIAM A. NISKANEN JR., BUREAUCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT (1971); NISKANEN, supra note 3; WILLIAM C. MITCHELL & RANDY T. SIMMONS, BEYOND POLITICS (1994); MANCUR OLSON, THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION (1965); ELINOR OSTROM, GOVERNING THE COMMONS (1990); James M. Buchanan, Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets, 22 J. POL. ECON. 114 (1954).

6. Important sources in this category include CATER, supra note 2; ANTHONY DOWNS, INSIDE BUREAUCRACY (1967); Hugh Helco, Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment, in PUBLIC POLICY THEORIES, MODELS, AND CONCEPTS (Daniel C. McCool ed., 1995); MORRIS P. FIORINA, CONGRESS: KEYSTONE OF THE WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT (1977); Theodore J. Lowi, American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory, 16 WORLD POL. 687 (1964) [hereinafter Lowi (1964)]; THEODORE J. LOWI, THE END OF LIBERALISM (2d ed. 1979) [hereinafter LOWI (1979)]; GRANT McCONNELL, PRIVATE POWER AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (1966); Walter A. Rosenbaum, The Bureaucracy and Environmental Policy, in ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AND POLICY (James P. Lester ed., 1995); WILDAVSKY, supra note 3; AARON WILDAVSKY & NAOMI CAIDEN, THE NEW POLITICS OF THE BUDGETARY PROCESS (3d ed. 1997).

7. DAVID R. MAYHEW, CONGRESS: THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION (1974); R. DOUGLAS ARNOLD, THE LOGIC OF CONGRESSIONAL ACTION (1990).

8. MAYHEW, supra note 7, at 13-38.

9. See, e.g., CATER, supra note 2; McCONNELL, supra note 6; FIORINA, supra note 6; MAYHEW, supra note 7; LOWI (1979), supra note 6; ARNOLD, supra note 7.

10. The argument presented here has its origin in ANTHONY DOWNS, AN ECONOMIC THEORY OF DEMOCRACY 207-59 (1957).

11. GARY C. JACOBSON, THE POLITICS OF CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS (4th ed. 1997).

12. ROBERT A. BERNSTEIN, ELECTIONS. REPRESENTATION, AND CONGRESSIONAL VOTING BEHAVIOR 11-32 (1989).

13. FIORINA, supra note 6, at 71-81.

14. Riley E. Dunlap, Public Opinion and Environmental Policy, in ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AND POLICY, supra note 6, at 63.

15. See, e.g., MARION CLAWSON, THE FEDERAL LANDS REVISITED 63-122 (1983); WILLIAM R. LOWRY, THE CAPACITY FOR WONDER 25-32 (1994); McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 196-245.

16. ROBERT H. NELSON, PUBLIC LANDS AND PRIVATE RIGHTS, THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 68, 195 (1995).

17. Id. at 67-73, 195.

18. CLAWSON, supra note 15, at 63-122; McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 196-245.

19. 33 U.S.C. § 1251(a)(1), ELR STAT. FWPCA § 101(a)(1); WALTER A. ROSENBAUM, THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN 158 (2d ed. 1977).

20. 42 U.S.C. § 4321, ELR STAT. NEPA § 2; ROSENBAUM, supra note 19, at 118.

21. 33 U.S.C. §§ 1251-1387, ELR STAT. FWPCA §§ 101-607.

22. See generally ROSENBAUM, supra note 19, at 158.

23. 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531-1544, ELR STAT. ESA §§ 2-18.

24. Suzanne Wicker, Stopgap Measures, THE ATLANTIC, Jan. 1992, at 75.

25. J. CLARENCE DAVIES & JAN MAZUREK, REGULATING POLLUTION: DOES THE SYSTEM WORK? 15-24 (1997); Michael E. Kraft & Norman J. Vig, The New Environmental Agenda, in ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE 1990s; REFORM OR REACTION?, supra note 4, at 19-27; LOWRY, supra note 15, at 43-51; WALTER A. ROSENBAUM, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND POLITICS 191-262 (1995).

26. LOWRY, supra note 15, at 32-35, 64; ROSENBAUM, supra note 25, at 22-34, 91-94.

27. Kraft & Vig, supra note 25, at 19-27; LOWRY, supra note 15, at 26-94; Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 223-28.

28. 30 U.S.C. §§ 1201-1328, ELR STAT. SMCRA §§ 101-908.

29. DAVIES & MAZUREK, supra note 25, at 6; Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 209-30; Kraft & Vig, supra note 25, at 19-27.

30. Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 208-09.

31. Id. at 223-28.

32. Id. at 210-30.

33. Pub. L. No. 99-499, 100 Stat. 1613 (reauthorizing and amending the Comprehensive Environmental Response. Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601-9675, ELR STAT. CERCLA §§ 101-405).

34. ROSENBAUM, supra note 25, at 133.

35. Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 215-20; DAVIES & MAZUREK, supra note 25, at 8-10.

36. I also draw upon the bureaucratic self-interest theory presented in DOWNS, supra note 6, but not as a primary source, as Downs' theory focuses on the internal dynamics of agencies, rather than their external, policymaking role.

37. ERNEST GRIFFITH, THE IMPASSE OF DEMOCRACY (1939); J. LEIPER FREEMAN, THE POLITICAL PROCESS (1955); CATER, supra note 2; McCONNELL, supra note 6; LOWI (1979), supra note 6.

38. LOWI (1979), supra note 6, at 67-77.

39. Id. at 69-91; McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 196-335.

40. CATER, supra note 2; LOWI (1979), supra note 6.

41. LOWI (1979), supra note 6.

42. Hugh Helco, Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment, in THE NEW AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 88 (A. King ed., 1978).

43. McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 211-30; MARC REISNER, CADILLAC DESERT (1986).

44. McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 225-28; LOWI (1979), supra note 6, at 75.

45. McCONNELL, supra note 6, at 200-11.

46. See Helco, supra note 42; Helco, supra note 6.

47. Helco, supra note 6, at 274-76.

48. Id. at 278.

49. Id. at 279.

50. Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 228-30.

51. MARTIN LEWIS, GREEN DELUSIONS 1-42 (1996).

52. Richard N.L. Andrews, Risk-Based Decision Making, in ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE 1990s, supra note 4, at 208-30; LOWRY, supra note 15, at 83-85. Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 211-20.

53. Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 212-13.

54. WILDAVSKY, supra note 3.

55. WILDAVSKY & CAIDEN, supra note 6, at 57.

56. Id. at 57-58.

57. Id. at 59-60.

58. Id. at 64.

59. Id. at 84-85.

60. Id.

61. Id. at 334-35.

62. Id. at 258-63.

63. LOWRY, supra note 15, at 43-51, 87-94; JAMES M. RIDENOUR, THE NATIONAL PARKS COMPROMISED 77-100 (1994).

64. NISKANEN, supra note 3; NISKANEN, supra note 5.

65. NISKANEN, supra note 3, at 22-23.

66. RANDALL O'TOOLE, REFORMING THE FOREST SERVICE (1988).

67. See PATRICK DUNLEAVY, DEMOCRACY, BUREAUCRACY, AND PUBLIC CHOICE: ECONOMIC EXPLANATIONS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE 156-68 (1992).

68. DOWNS, supra note 6.

69. NISKANEN, supra note 3.

70. See O'TOOLE, supra note 66.

71. See, e.g., BARRY COMMONER, THE CLOSING CIRCLE (1972); WILLIAM OPHULS, ECOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF SCARCITY 20-45 (1977); Anne Naess, The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects, in ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE 411 (Susan J. Armstrong & Richard G. Botzler eds., 1993).

72. Kraft & Vig, supra note 25.

73. Id. at 367.

74. LOWRY, supra note 15, at 65-67; O'TOOLE, supra note 66; Rosenbaum, supra note 6, at 143-45, 162-64. In an interview with the author, Randall O'Toole said that a high ranking Forest Service official had told him in 1998 that White House and congressional interference with the agency had pushed morale to a new low. The official commented that from then on the chief mission of the Forest Service would be "to boost the election prospects of Vice President A1 Gore."