Political economy and the adoption of everyday environmental policies in the American states, 1997: an exploratory analysis

The political economy model has been widely and effectively used to explain and predict adoption rates of highly salient and/or controversial policies in the American states. However, use of this model to predict policy adoption in noncontroversial domains has been limited. This article tests the extent to which the model is successful in explaining the adoption of less-salient, everyday policies intended to improve environmental quality among the American states. The addition of conditional terms related to the model's political and bureaucratic components resulted in explaining 57% of the variance in commitment to everyday environmentalism among the American states. In sum, the number of everyday environmental policies adopted by state governments is a function of economic considerations, legislative accountability and professionalism, bureaucratic commitment, political culture and previous levels of policy adoption. Alternately—and unlike more controversial environmental policy domains—partisanship, ideology, party control of government and interest group forces do not have an impact on adoption of everyday environmental policies.