Doctoral Dissertation Research: Braking Detroit: State Management of The Automobile in The United States, 1966-1988

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该博士论文研究改进基金由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术和社会项目资助，研究美国汽车技术的治理。在整个20世纪，汽车作为伟大的美国机器占据统治地位，它与美国生活和文化的各个层面联系在一起，从经济周期到青少年约会的激情，从劳动的艰辛到足球妈妈的旅行。然而，汽车带来了多方面的风险：碰撞损坏的车身，排气管喷出的有毒废气，以及发动机消耗越来越稀缺的燃料资源。在20世纪60年代和70年代，美国联邦政府创建了一些机构——主要是国家公路交通安全管理局和环境保护署——以三个方面来规范汽车工业：碰撞安全、燃油效率和排放控制。本论文研究考察了从20世纪60年代到80年代监管汽车的政府机构（即国家）的增长，当时国家受到新的政治力量的抨击，政府官僚机构经历了大规模的削减。虽然以前的监管研究要么集中在监管远见者（又名政策企业家）的传记上，要么集中在立法史上，但本文的研究考察了国家如何建立官僚组织和行政能力，以通过绩效标准来监管和制定行业变革。本项目认为，只有通过研究这些政府权力的微观实践，我们才能理解监管制度是如何真正影响其预期目标的。本文的研究考察了这些机构是如何发展、学习和演变的，以及它们是如何影响汽车行业的技术变革的。该项目基于传统的历史方法，包括档案研究；政府文件、报刊研究；口述历史。该项目意义重大，不仅因为它填补了历史空白，而且因为对监管和监管机构的深刻理解对于潜在地塑造其他技术（例如，排放温室气体的技术）和指导国内汽车工业走出目前的困境非常重要。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant--supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF--examines the governance of automobile technology in the United States. Throughout the 20th century, the automobile reigned as the great American machine, a object bound to every level of American life and culture, from economic cycles to passions of teen dating, from travails of labor to travels of soccer moms. Yet, automobiles brought with them multiple dimensions of risk: crashes mangled bodies, tailpipes spewed toxic exhausts, and engines guzzled increasingly scarce fuel resources. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States federal government created institutions--primarily the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency--to regulate the automobile industry around three concerns, crash safety, fuel efficiency, and control of emissions. This dissertation research examines the growth of government institutions (i.e., the state) that regulate automobile from the 1960s through the 1980s when the state came under fire from new political forces and governmental bureaucracies experienced large cutbacks. While previous studies of regulation have focused either on biographies of regulatory visionaries (a.k.a. policy entrepreneurs) or on legislative histories, this dissertation research examines how the state built bureaucratic organizations and administrative capacity to regulate and enact change in industry through performance standards. Only by examining these micro-practices of governmental power, this project argues, can we understand how regulatory regimes have truly influenced their intended objects. This dissertation research examines how these institutions developed, learned, and evolved, and how they shaped technological change in the automobile industry.The project is based on traditional historical methods, including archival research; government document, newspaper, and periodical research; and oral histories. The project is significant not only because it fills historiographical gaps, but also because a deep understanding of regulation and regulatory institutions is important for potentially shaping other technologies (e.g., those emitting greenhouse gases) and for guiding the domestic auto industry beyond its current tribulations.