State Capacity and Its Discontents: Growth and Decay in the U.S. Environmental State, 1973-2021.

• In Event: Enviromental Politics

Abstract

What shapes the strength and capacity of the environmental state to provide environmental welfare? We build an original data set spanning 239 governmental units for nearly 50 years, from 1973 to 2021, to identify the determinants and expand sociological theorizations of environmental state capacity, and state capacity more broadly. We find that state capacity, generally, undulates with the ebbs and flows of partisan politics and economic growth, but also that environmental state capacity is modulated by causal conditions rooted in more particular patterns of politics, including hidden economic developmentalism and the provision of specific forms of environmental welfare, like forms of “special nature” that seem to evoke a broadly sympathetic, trans-ideological politics rooted in loose but enduring cultural affinities for open space and wilderness. We also find little evidence that environmental regulatory prominence, often presumed to evoke the powerful ire of industry groups, straightforwardly leads to an erosive politics of capacity decay. Our findings hold broad relevance for students of state power and governance, revealing how hidden developmentalism and culturally tinged politics may outweigh the more conventionally emphasized politics of deregulation and capacity decay. They carry special relevance to scholars of U.S. environmental statecraft.

Authors

• Chris M. Rea, Brown University

• Scott Frickel, Brown University