Environmental Policymaking, Grassroots Activism, and Institutional Change

• In Event: American Political Development and Social Change

Abstract

During the 1950s, there was a seeming mismatch between the problem of air pollution and the stagnant local agencies designed to address it. As pollution control agencies appeared to be mired in pre-war methods and approaches, scientists and engineers had developed a broader understanding of air pollution which went beyond the black or grey smoke that agencies had traditionally policed. However, it was not until 1970 that the U.S. government developed the capacity to address air pollution in all its varied forms with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. This paper will seek to explain the development of environmental policymaking in the 1950s and 1960s as a dynamic process in which pre-existing institutions were not merely obstacles to change but which also contributed to the creation of new institutions (like the EPA in 1970). Moreover, it will focus on the role of grassroots activists in the state campaigns that set the stage for the adoption of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Author

• Ann-Marie E. Szymanski, University of Oklahoma