The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971–2013

Kim, Sung Eun; Urpelainen, Johannes

doi:10.1111/ropr.12238

Cited by 30 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…These effects may stand in the way of compromise, collaboration, and efficient use of resources by organizations engaged in policy conflicts. Given the increasingly polarized nature of U.S. environmental policy debates (Kim & Urpelainen, ) and the general polarization of partisan politics in the United States (McCright, Xiao, & Dunlap, ), attention to improving policy debates through overcoming cognitive and experiential biases is critical. Insights from social psychology may provide some guidance on how the devil shift may be reduced within local policy debates.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The finding that extreme policy belief is associated with a stronger expression of the devil shift confirms earlier findings and adds credence to the Sabatier et al () findings that the degree of distance between policy beliefs will at least partially determine the expression and degree of devil shifting observed. As recent research in the U.S. context indicates, environmental politics are increasingly polarized resulting in more barriers to the creation of environmental policy and less cooperation between coalitions on important wicked problem such as climate change (Kim & Urpelainen, ). This finding is also mirrored in a Pew Center Report which finds that the more ideologically extreme beliefs a person holds the more likely he or she is to believe the other side should be the one that compromises (Pew Research Center, , p. 56).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and passage of landmark regulations governing natural resource management and extraction, environmental policy debates have become rich ground for people studying conflict, collaboration, communication, and the policy process. In recent decades, environmental policy debates in the United States have become more polarized and dominated by partisanship (Kim & Urpelainen, ). Issues such as climate change are persistently partisan with votes falling on strictly partisan lines (Aschwanden, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Katz

2018

Review of Policy Research

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Prior research on policy conflicts indicates a tendency among policy actors to misperceive the influence of actors engaged in policy debates based on the degree of distance between their relative policy positions. This research develops a measure for assessing the degree and direction of the misperception effect. This measure is then utilized as a dependent variable to assess the relationship between theoretically relevant factors and the degree to which actors will exaggerate the influence of their opponents and allies. The research uses original survey data of policy actors engaged in the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York. The results indicate misperceptions of relative influence are prevalent and most associated with the experience of a policy loss and holding relatively extreme policy beliefs. The findings provide new insight into factors that influence the demonization of political opponents. These insights are timely in the context of polarized debates over environmental and energy policy in the United States.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

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The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Katz

2018

Review of Policy Research

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“…More specific analyses of public opinion on climate change by Ansolabehere and Konisky (2014) and Mildenberger and Leiserowitz (2017) also corroborate the importance of political ideology and party identity, and provide evidence that polarization is increasing over time. Kim and Urpelainen (2017) also offer evidence of increasing polarization between Democrat and Republican elites, with Democrats much more sympathetic toward environmental concerns than Republicans.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Ideology, Political Party, and Support for Greater Federal Spending on Environmental Protection in the United States: Evidence from the General Social Surveys, 1993–2018

Yen

Zampelli

2021

Review of Policy Research

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This paper focuses on the effects of political ideology and party affiliation on support for more government spending on environmental protection. Pooled-sample results show that Liberals (Democrats) are more likely to support higher government spending on environmental protection than Moderates (Independents), who, in turn, are more likely to support higher spending levels than Conservatives (Republicans). The results persist even when we control for respondents' opinions concerning whether the federal government, in general, does too little or too much. When stratifying by party, ideological divisions generally narrow, while stratifying by ideology leads to slightly wider divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Together, these results suggest that when Liberals and Conservatives form opinions about government spending on the environment, party affiliation, to some degree, dampens the effects of ideology. Between 2014 and 2018 the probability of supporting more environmental spending increased, albeit slightly, for all ideologies and parties, but more so for Liberals and Democrats.

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“…Whereas both major political parties competed for environmental voters at the onset of the modern environmental era, environmental protection is now perceived as an issue "owned" by the Democratic Party (Egan 2013). This issue ownership is also reflected in the severe partisan polarization that now exists, at both the elite (Jeong and Lowry 2019;Kim and Urpelainen 2017;Shipan and Lowry 2001) and mass public level (Egan and Mullin 2017). Partisan polarization has contributed to gridlock in Congress, which has resulted in a prolonged period of legislative inactivity on environmental issues (Klyza and Sousa 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introduction: U.S. environmental policy research in uncertain times

Konisky¹

2020

Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy

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The year 2020 marks several golden anniversaries in U.S. environmental policy. On July 9, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an administrative reorganization plan that created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Prior to that point, federal responsibilities for activities such as pollution control and chemicals regulation were limited in scope and scattered throughout different parts of the federal bureaucracy. The new EPA consolidated numerous existing federal authorities, including the National Air Pollution Control Administration, the Bureau of Water Hygiene, the Bureau of Solid Waste Management, and the Bureau on Radiological Health, from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Federal Water Quality Administration from the Department of the Interior (DOI), and three separate agencies responsible for pesticides control, including operations within the Department of Agriculture that had managed pesticide registrations (Williams 1993). This reorganization combined what had been disparate agencies, housed in different cabinet departments with varying organizational cultures, into a fledgling agency with a new shared mission to protect human health and the environment. It is also the 50-year anniversary of several legislative achievements in the area of environmental protection and natural resource management. On January 1, 1970, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) into law. This statute, inspired by the work of an Indiana University political scientist, Lynton Caldwell, created the White House Council on Environmental Quality to coordinate federal policy on the environment, and required federal agencies to prospectively consider the environmental impacts of their major decisions (Wertz 2014). By requiring agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions, Congress signaled to the vast federal bureaucracy that agency decisions must at least be conscious of their environmental impacts. Later the same year, Congress passed the landmark federal Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970. This statute, which former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy recently referred to as "one of the most successful public health laws ever enacted" (McCarthy and Burke 2017), systematically reshaped the U.S. approach to air pollution control. Responsibility for air quality before the 1970 CAA rested with state and local government authorities, most of which lacked the requisite institutional and financial capacity and/or the political will to meaningfully address increasingly severe air quality issues (Davies 1970). The CAA gave the federal government, and specifically the EPA, the authority to regulate air emissions from stationary (e.g., power plants, refineries, factories, etc.) and mobile (e.g., cars, trucks) sources of air pollution through a combination of prescriptive ambient and technology-based standards. Fifty years later, the EPA's use of the CAA still creates controversy, and regularly meets staunch opposition from many industry groups, but its programs have proven re...

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The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971–2013

Cited by 30 publications

References 54 publications

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Political Ideology, Political Party, and Support for Greater Federal Spending on Environmental Protection in the United States: Evidence from the General Social Surveys, 1993–2018

Introduction: U.S. environmental policy research in uncertain times

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