Regulatory competition, administrative discretion, and environmental policy implementation

Abstract

This study assesses what causes American states to assume the authority to administer federal environmental programs within their borders, rather than leave implementation to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some observers have argued that interstate competition for mobile capital may motivate states to seek this authority so that they may reduce the regulatory burdens imposed on industrial polluters. Other scholars highlight the importance of intrastate political and economic factors or vertical influences emanating from federal officials. I argue that the relative importance of each of these classes of explanations will vary across environmental policy arenas, depending on the amount of implementation discretion that federal programs provide to state agencies. Results from event history analyses of two major environmental programs are generally, though not entirely, consistent with this theory.

The Transaction Costs of the Administrative Presidency: Evidence From a Trump-Era Clean Water Act Enforcement Reduction

“…Therefore, additional research is needed into the water policy sector and other environmental policy areas to identify if the problematic effects of administrative enforcement reductions detected in our study emerge elsewhere. Furthermore, future scholarship is needed to interrogate the role of states in the current U.S. environmental governance system as states have (a) become increasingly competitive with the federal government (e.g., blocking federal actions in the courts; Dichio & Singer, 2023;Dishman, 2023;Rabe, 2022;Thompson & Gusmano, 2022) and (b) enforce environmental policies with differing levels of stringency (Fowler & Birdsall, 2021;Woods, 2021Woods, , 2022. Lastly, we encourage researchers to delve deeper into the interconnectedness and overlap of environmental policies.…”

“…At the state level, states can receive enforcement primacy of the CWA (i.e., distribute and enforce NPDES permits, inspect firms) and SDWA (i.e., enforce treatment quality standards, inspect CWSs) through an application process. States that provide satisfactory evidence to the EPA that they will enforce the CWA or SDWA with the standards as required by the federal government will receive enforcement primacy (Fowler, 2020; Fowler & Birdsall, 2021; Woods, 2021, 2022). In 2020, 46 states had full enforcement primacy of the CWA, and all U.S. states except Wyoming had enforcement primacy of the SDWA (Haider & Teodoro, 2021).…”

Hydraulic fracturing, polarization, and environmental policy implementation

“…The last two articles of this issue study the role of administration in environmental policy implementation, more specifically the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Woods (2021) tests competing theoretical hypotheses on why American states implement environmental policy themselves instead of leaving it to the EPA. He argues that both interstate competition for mobile capital and intrastate political and economic factors play a role, but that the relevance of these factors differs depending on the amount of discretion granted to the federal programs.…”