Environmental Protection at the State Level: Politics and Progress in Controlling Pollution.

Although the volume of research in American environmental policy has exploded over the last decade, a vast majority of the work in the field has concentrated on politics and policy at the federal level. During the 1980s, due to a combination of increased state governmental capacity and environmental cutbacks at the federal level, many states made massive progress in the area of environmental protection. Recently, therefore, scholars have initiated a consideration of the states as viable centers of policy creation as well as implementation: thus, a small but growing body of literature on state environmental policy has begun to emerge.

Environmental Protection at the State Level, by Evan J. Ringquist, is a solid study of state environmental policy. The author utilizes a quantitative framework to analyze both air and water pollution policy across the fifty states. He also offers a comprehensive overview of both federal and state pollution policy to date, inclusive of the roles of interest groups, parties, and elected and appointed government officials, thus allowing the reader a context in which to better evaluate the study. In addition, the scientific data on the effects of pollution on health and the environment are described in careful detail, creating a link between the natural and social sciences in his survey of air and water pollution policy at the state level.

The central theme of the book rests on two key questions. The first is an investigation into what drives certain states to develop more stringent environmental regulations than others. The second issue being investigated inquires as to whether the variance in regulatory strength and policy innovation has any effect on the quality of the environment in the state. These questions are both clearly stated and meticulously answered, as the author's carefully written conclusions at the end of each chapter sum up succinctly not only the findings of his analysis, but the implications of those findings to the overall study and environmental policy analysis in general.

Interestingly, Ringquist undertakes to investigate both policy outputs and environmental outcomes. The study of the latter has been a widely neglected area, perhaps due to the relatively small time period within which scholars have had to work. The relationship between policy creation, policy implementation and policy success (or lack thereof) is always of great interest to public policy analysts, and Ringquist sets out to fill a notable void in the state environmental policy literature.

As noted above, the literature in this area of environmental politics is extremely limited. Although several journal articles, mostly written during the 1980s, have dealt with state pollution policy, Environmental Protection at the State Level, in fact, has only one similar monograph on which to build: William Lowry's 1992 work, The Dimensions of Federalism: State Governments and Pollution Control Policies. The two books complement each other nicely, as each offers something the other lacks. Ringquist's most notable omission is that, unlike Lowry, his model for determining those factors that drive state pollution policy does not account for environmental factors, such as the degree to which a state is polluted. The author instead relies on political and economic characteristics of a state. The rational political actor would tend to react more strongly to a higher level of pollution; thus, this variable is an essential ingredient in any such model. Ringquist does, however, utilize pollution as a factor in his model evaluating pollution outcomes, an analysis which Lowry neglects entirely. Finally, Ringquist chooses to ignore questions of federalism, issues which are crucially important to the study of those environmental problems which transcend state boundaries with impunity. The author could have augmented his study by discussing, perhaps in the conclusion, his findings as they related to questions of the degree to which the federal government should participate in state-level environmental policy decisions.

In sum, Environmental Protection at the State Level would be a useful tool for any graduate class in environmental studies, policy analysis, or public administration. This book may well be, however, a bit onerous for any but the most advanced undergraduates. Ringquist's work is extensively researched, well-organized, and clearly written. This book can certainly be considered a timely contribution to the field of state environmental policy analysis.

Anthony S. Kandel
Lander University

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