This book continues Andy McFarland's long-standing scholarly project of linking the political theory of American pluralism with the study of social movements. In two previous books, Public Interest Lobbies: Decision-Making on Energy, and Common Cause: Lobbying in the Public Interest, McFarland explored the emergence of Public interest lobbies and their significance for our understanding of the nature of interest-group competition in America.
In his most recent study, McFarland examines the political behavior of public interest groups from another perspective. He discusses the National Coal Policy Project - a two year effort on the part of 60 representatives of environmental organizations and business firms to reach agreement on federal regulations governing the production, transportation and burning of coal.
This initiative began after the passage of the bitterly contested Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. Funded by both foundations and companies, its purpose was to see if representatives of two often hostile set of interest-groups could agree on a common set of policies that would further both of their respective objectives, namely the preservation and improvement of environmental quality and the development of coal as an energy source.
On one level, this experiment in business-environmental cooperation was extremely successful. The project's participants came to better understand, learn from and respect each other. Working intensively through a series of task forces, they were able to reach agreement on a wide range of issues: the Project's final report came to more than 800 pages. The effort also attracted a considerable amount of highly favorable media coverage.
But from another perspective, this experiment in "cooperative pluralism" or regulatory corporatism was a colossal failure. Virtually none of the Project's recommendations were enacted into law. McFarland explains the Project's lack of policy impact as resulting from the lack of participation by politicians and regulatory officials. In other words, its participants forgot to bring the state back in. As a result, the deals they struck became unravelled as they worked their way through the legislative process.
However his account suggests another, more important, explanation. The project failed primarily because neither "side" could deliver their respective constituencies. A number of important environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, refused to allow representatives of their organizations to participate in the project. Their refusal stemmed from a variety of factors: they mistrusted the motives of industry in wanting to work with them, they did not wish to limit their political options and they reasoned they could get a better deal by taking on the industry rather than negotiating with it. Nor were a critical mass of individual firms or trade associations willing to be bound by the project's recommendations, let alone invest in their scarce political resources into lobbying for their adoption. In short, the project's failure laid bare the vibrancy of American interest-group pluralism.
This does not mean that cooperation between business firms and environmental organizations is not possible. Indeed, Baptist-bootlegger coalitions are common in environmental policymaking. But it does suggest that cooperation is only possible when its objectives are modest and clearly in the self-interest of each organization. In many cases, this cooperation is as likely to undermine as to advance the public interest.
Cooperative Pluralism is a fine piece of work. It is not only well and carefully researched, but unusually well-written. Like McFarland's other two monographs, it combines both original empirical material with important theoretical insights. In particular, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of both the limits and possibilities of cooperative behavior among interest-groups and the significance of such cooperation for interest-group theory. It thus marks another stage in our effort to grasp the significance of the changes in the interest-group universe that took place during the 1970s.
David Vogel
University of California, Berkeley
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