Building the American Green State: Spatial and Temporal Intercurrence

• In Event: Public Policy in a Changing World

Abstract

Environmental policymaking in the U.S. can be a byzantine process of different laws, different agencies, and different levels of government. Of great significance is the overlap of federal and state laws and institutions, often passed or created at different times and underscoring different goals and interests. These overlaps and intersections, termed intercurrence, can lead to tremendous policy challenges—conflict, chaos, and contingency, yet opportunities as well. This paper will present a framework to analyze the development of this green state, centering it in our understanding and making of environmental policy today. More specifically, the paper will define the green state and present an overview of how this green state was constructed during U.S. history. It will also situate green state building in the larger context of American political development (APD), where it is an understudied policy realm. This matters for APD for three main reasons. 1. This lack of attention to the green state means APD is missing the development of a significant part of governance in the United States since its founding. 2. The expansion of the green state is of central importance to two of the major pulses of growth of federal government authority: the Progressive Era and the new social regulation of the 1960s and 1970s. 3. A lack of focus on the green state in the last several decades leads ADP and American politics scholars to miss a central dynamic of party and overall politics.

Author

• Christopher Klyza, Middlebury College