Environmental Review & Case Study: Cleaning Up the Air: The EPA and Shuttle Diplomacy

Abstract

In practice, building collaborative relationships between environmental groups and industry is not an easy task during environmental rulemaking. However, this article uses original interview data to document a different perspective from agency officials and stakeholders across two case studies within the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ): the renewable fuels standard and the locomotive and marine engine rule. This article argues that OTAQ used a new approach, shuttle diplomacy, in these particular cases to negotiate stakeholder differences prior to publication of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The findings from these interviews suggest that the intent of this rule development approach is to provide an atmosphere where stakeholders begin to trust in the process because they are helping to create it. Environmental Practice 13: 227-234 (2011)

Are We There Yet? A Roadmap to Understanding National Park Service Rulemaking

“…The USFWS used a more collaborative process during the preproposal stage in Rinfret's research, which has also been used at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an attempt to produce rules more efficiently with stakeholder buy-in (Rinfret 2011b). The fact that the NPS is not using a collaborative process may explain why the agency is having such a difficult time producing a rule in this policy area.…”

“…Overall, they argue that interest groups are indeed influential in the preproposal stage as well (Hoefer and Ferguson 2007;Rinfret 2011aRinfret , 2011bYackee 2012;Rinfret 2013a, 2013b;Rinfret and Cook 2014;Cook and Rinfret 2014). Furthermore, they collectively argue that stakeholders find the preproposal stage particularly important in order to influence a given agency.…”

Framing the debate: How interest groups influence draft rules at the United States Environmental Protection Agency

“…Although this archival research is useful, personal interviews are critical for determining how interest groups framed issues and their perceived effectiveness (Rinfret, 2011a(Rinfret, , 2011bWest, 2009). The archival data were collected from the regulatory docket, which includes the proposed and final rules, agency meeting logs and other documents.…”

“…During this process, agency staff frequently conduct shuttle diplomacy or reg-neg lite (Lubbers, 2008;Rinfret, 2011a;Rinfret & Cook, 2014). The goal of these off-the-record interactions is to leverage the expertise of stakeholder groups and find consensus among stakeholders about the content of a proposed rule (Cook, 2014b;Lubbers, 2008;Rinfret, 2011a). The goal of these off-the-record interactions is to leverage the expertise of stakeholder groups and find consensus among stakeholders about the content of a proposed rule (Cook, 2014b;Lubbers, 2008;Rinfret, 2011a).…”

“…To understand how interest groups impact outcomes, scholars initially focused on the notice and comment stage (Golden, 1998;Kamieniecki, 2006;West, 2005;Yackee & Yackee, 2006). This literature has illustrated that interest groups can influence outcomes, primarily through their informal interactions and information exchanges with regulators (Hoefer & Ferguson, 2007;Rinfret, 2011a). As a result, an emerging set of scholars have assessed stakeholder activities during the preproposal stage of the process (Coglianese, 2007;Hoefer & Ferguson, 2007;Naughton, Schmid, Yackee, & Zhan, 2009;Rinfret, 2011aRinfret, , 2011bWest, 2009;Yackee, 2012).…”