The Influence of Organizations and Institutions on Wetland Policy Stability: The Rapanos Case

This paper uses a case study of wetland regulation in the United States to develop elements of a theory about institutional stability and change in policy processes involving large public organizations. This theoretical approach draws on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to understand events that are not well explained by other policy theories. Our approach accounts for the theoretically unexpected outcomes of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Rapanos v. United States, which stood to change the way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulate the filling of wetlands. We propose a typology of institutional types that operate inside public organizations, and use process tracing to show how tacit institutions, those created informally within public organizations, can play key roles in determining the outcomes of policy processes. In the Rapanos case, informal coordination mechanisms enabled regulators and members of the regulated community to preserve substantially the pre‐ruling status quo. The key role of these microlevel interactions in shaping the macrolevel behaviors of public organizations underscores the importance of further research investigating how, in similar cases, different behavioral mechanisms interact in often complex and unexpected ways to determine the outcomes of policy processes.     

The Effects of Competition‐Based Public Policy on Contractual Arrangements

When competition is naturally limited, policymakers craft regulation to obtain effects similar to those that would have occurred in the presence of competition. In many instances, regulation of this type is not successful in overcoming market failures. We rely on property rights theory and transaction cost theory to predict when state‐level policy statements will actually lead to a redistribution of benefits at the city level. We test this theory in the context of cable television franchise renewal agreements—a setting historically resistant to competition. We look to the language of the franchise agreements for evidence of concessions made by the cable operator to the city, and using a difference‐in‐difference estimator, we find that pro‐competitive regulation translates into concessions to the city. However, a credible threat of competition embedded in regulation is not enough to curb opportunism associated with monopoly supply in cases of large franchisees; larger cable operators are at least 60 percent less likely to offer more favorable terms of trade. However, consistent with transaction cost predictions, asset‐specific investments by the cable operator do curb opportunism; there is a 51 percent increase in the odds of a franchisee offering more concessions for a 1 standard deviation change—about 1,020 mi of the plant. These findings are important for those involved in crafting policy at all levels of government as well as for researchers interested in understanding the role of long‐term contracting and the use of hybrid mechanisms such as franchise agreements in contemporary governance.     

The Limited Effects of Federal Environmental Justice Policy on State Enforcement

The federal government adopted several measures during the mid-1990s to address concerns about race-based and class-based disparities in environmental protection. This article examines whether these measures affected the pattern of state enforcement of three federal pollution control laws. Using differences-in-differences models to estimate the effects of the federal policy adoption, I find evidence of increases in state enforcement of the Clean Air Act in large African-American communities, but declines in enforcement in communities with large poor and Hispanic populations. Similarly, there is evidence that state enforcement of the Clean Water Act decreased in poor and African-American communities, but there were no real changes in enforcement of facilities regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Collectively, the analysis suggests that the federal policy had minimal positive effects on state regulatory enforcement.     

Smoggy with a Chance of Altruism: The Effects of Ozone Alerts on Outdoor Recreation and Driving in Atlanta

Metropolitan smog alerts are prominent public information campaigns designed to enhance public health and to curb driving and other emissions. Unlike many other voluntary information‐based environmental policies, air quality alerts target household behavior via forecast information about ambient concentrations rather than firm or product characteristics. This paper explores behaviors with high emissions (driving) and with high exposure (outdoor recreation) and underscores the difference between altruistic and risk aversion motivations. Behavioral impacts are identified using the threshold nature of daily air quality forecasts. A regression discontinuity (RD) design finds elderly users and exercisers tend to curtail their use of a major park following smog alerts. The RD design also reveals that households do not drive less on smog alert days. Juxtaposing high emissions behavior with high exposure behavior in the same study highlights how public forecast information may better trigger some responses and struggle to trigger others.     

The Determinants of Policy Introduction and Bill Adoption: Examining Minimum Wage Increases in the American States, 1997–2006

Faced with long intervals between federal minimum wage increases in recent years, state legislatures are increasingly likely to take action. Motivated by the relative dearth of empirical work on minimum wages in the American states, this article considered various explanations to determine which factors are associated with legislative efforts to pass wage increases. Taking seriously the view that disagreements over the effects of minimum wage increases enhances the influence of political factors, we drew on the policy adoption and diffusion literature to examine how internal determinants (political and economic variables) and regional diffusion pressures relate to both the introduction and adoption of minimum wage legislation in the American states in the years between the last two federal minimum wage increases (1997–2006). Employing negative binomial regression to analyze annual bill introductions, we found that a number of political variables are related to the consideration of minimum wage increases. However, using event history analysis to examine annual adoptions of minimum wage increases, we found few of the same variables matter. We concluded with a discussion of the empirical results within the context of the broader policy literature and cautioned future scholars to consider seriously whether political factors exert distinct influences at different stages of the policy process.     

Public Perceptions of Expert Credibility on Policy Issues: The Role of Expert Framing and Political Worldviews

How do individuals assess the credibility of experts in various policy domains? Under what conditions does the public interpret particular scientific knowledge claims as being trustworthy and credible? Using data collected from an online survey experiment, administered to 1,507 adult residents of Quebec, this paper seeks answers to these questions. Specifically, we examine variation in the way members of the public perceive the credibility of scientific experts in the areas of climate change, shale gas extraction, cell phones, and wind farms. Our results contribute to the existing literatures on public perceptions of policy experts, framing, and cultural theory. We find that individuals evaluate expert credibility based on the way in which experts frame issues, and on the congruity/dissonance between these expert communication frames and one's underlying worldview. However, we also identify limits to these framing effects. Our findings shed light on the interaction of framing and political worldviews in shaping public perceptions of expert credibility in various policymaking contexts.