Fighting Wind Farms

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Environmental Politics (Table 6)

Abstract

When environmental infrastructure is proposed, where is it built, and where is it rejected? This research uses comparative historical, archival, and ethnographic research to study proposed wind farms. Specifically, I utilize a political comparison between liberal California and conservative Texas to study how state political structures enable or discourage environmental infrastructure implementation. Within each state I compare a success case of a wind farm that was ultimately built to a failure case of a wind farm that was not. This research design uses a “similar places with different outcomes” structure to solve the puzzle of why some infrastructure projects succeed and some are successfully resisted in places with similar characteristics and political structures. I argue that successful wind farms were supported by multifaceted coalitions and were framed as having local benefits beyond state or national climate goals, whereas unsuccessful wind farms lacked the political capital to override allied local resistance.

Author

• Charlotte Pierce Scott, University of Pennsylvania