The bureaucracy in the United States has a hand in almost all aspects of our lives, from the water we drink to the parts in our cars. For a force so influential and pervasive, however, this body of all nonelective government officials remains an enigmatic, impersonal entity. The literature of bureaucratic theory is rife with contradictions and mysteries. Bureaucrats, Politics, and the Environment attempts to clarify some of these problems. The authors surveyed the workers at two agencies: enforcement personnel from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and employees of the New Mexico Environment Department. By examining what they think about politics, the environment, their budgets, and the other institutions and agencies with which they interact, this work puts a face on the bureaucracy and provides an explanation for its actions.

Revised to include new discussions on climate justice, green political parties, climate legislation and recent environmental struggles.

This textbook is at the forefront of its field and is an invaluable resource for undergraduates studying politics and environment studies. The most comprehensive book on the subject, this new edition has been expanded and revised.

"Anyone wishing to explore the cutting edge of environmental policy and management will find this book an invaluable tool." - The Honourable David Anderson, Minister of Environment, Government of Canada, 1999-2004

'An evenhanded, realistic and thoughtful approach to identifying environmental problems and management goals' Stephen Zavestoski, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of San Francisco '...a theoretically advanced yet accessible treatment of environmental governance, drawing on an impressive range of material to investigate the roles of states and industries in addressing environmental problems.' Harriet Bulkeley, Department of Geography, University of Durham 'Written in the vein of critical optimism, this book is pitched at the right level to inspire people trying to make pragmatic changes to their governmental and industrial systems: trying to make a difference where it counts.' Timothy Doyle, Associate Professor in Geographical and Environmental Studies, University of Adelaide What is the future for our environment? We face serious risks of major industrial accidents and global environmental degradation, yet new technological developments promise a standard of living unimaginable only a few generations ago. Michael Howes outlines the ways in which governments have responded to environmental risk over the past four decades. He examines the key environmental issues and the claims of envirosceptics, offering a new strategy for making major administrative decisions in the face of uncertainty. He explains how governments have developed environmental policy, and the ongoing tensions between science, industry, the state, social movements, and electoral politics. In a clear, straightforward manner, he shows how to use the work of theorists Ulrich Beck, Michel Foucault and John Dryzek to analyse environmental policy. He also develops a new method of measuring the effectiveness of environmental governance in developed countries. Howes draws on a wide array of sources from business, government, environment groups, academic research, and NGOs to illustrate his arguments, with comparisons between the environmental policies of the UK, the USA and Australia.

Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.