Collaborative Research: The Policy Geography of Environmental Risk

研究美国环境政策的学者们早就认识到地方机构可以影响政策的执行，但地方污染控制机构的区域办事处在执行联邦法律方面的具体作用几乎没有受到关注。这是一个重大的疏忽，可能会严重影响我们对政治，经济和行政因素如何影响政府管理环境风险的理解。在这个项目中，研究小组使用一种新的方法来研究重叠的行政，政治和环境问题边界如何塑造政策产出和结果的分布。他们将这种方法称为政策地理学，并认为它可能会引发以授权问题、协调困境和不公平的政策交付形式出现的治理挑战，其中每一种都对环境风险管理产生重要影响。使用新收集的，细粒度的机构数据，该团队利用软件ogf地理信息系统绘制了50个州的区域办公室政策地理图，以实施2002-2012年的清洁空气法案（CAA）和清洁水法（CWA）。然后，他们将这些信息与政策输出（政府检查和执法行动）和政策结果（合规和污染风险）的设施级数据相结合，以测试理论上知情的政治控制，政策协调和环境正义的假设。使用分层线性模型进行这些检验，以解释数据的嵌套结构。拟议的研究将有利于正在进行的管理环境风险的政策努力。这项研究的结果将使我们了解环境风险模式的起源，并提高我们评估旨在减轻整个社会不利或不均衡风险水平的政策处方的能力。从这个意义上说，该提案谈到了NSF的核心租户的使命，以“促进健康，繁荣和福利的公民。“污染给公众带来的风险仍然是重要和巨大的。例如，超过1.5亿美国人目前生活在至少一种主要空气污染物的空气质量标准不符合的地区，超过40，000个水体因未能满足其使用要求而被视为“受损”。CAA和CWA是防止空气和水污染风险的主要保障，了解其实施对于确保整个社会污染控制的有效性和公平性至关重要。通过审查不同体制安排对政策结果的影响，研究可以确定重新配置的机会，从而改善环境治理。

Scholars of U.S. environmental policy have long recognized that subnational institutions can influence policy implementation, but there has been virtually no attention given to the specific role of sub-state pollution control agencies' regional offices in carrying out federal laws. This is a major oversight that may substantially affect our understanding of how political, economic, and administrative factors influence the government's management of environmental risks. In this project, the research team uses a new approach to examine how overlapping administrative, political, and environmental problem boundaries shape the distribution of policy outputs and outcomes. They term this approach policy geography, and argue that it can induce governance challenges in the form of delegation problems, coordination dilemmas, and inequitable policy delivery, each of which has important implications for the management of environmental risks. Using newly-collected, fine-grained institutional data, the team utilizes software ogf geographic informtion systems to map out each of the 50 state's regional office policy geography for implementation of both the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) for 2002-2012. They then combine this information with facility-level data on policy outputs (government inspections and enforcement actions) and policy outcomes (compliance and pollution risks) to test theoretically informed hypotheses on political control, policy coordination, and environmental justice. These tests are conducted using hierarchical linear models to account for the nested structure of the data. The proposed research will benefit ongoing policy efforts to manage environmental risks. The results of this research will inform our understanding of the origins of environmental risk patterns, and enhance our capacity to evaluate policy prescriptions aimed at mitigating unfavorable or uneven risk levels across society. In this sense, the proposal speaks to the core tenants of NSF's mission to "promote the health, prosperity and welfare of its citizens." The risks presented to the public from pollution remain important and substantial. For example, over 150 million Americans currently live in areas that are not meeting air quality standards for at least one major air pollutan), and more than 40,000 bodies of water are deemed "impaired" for failing to meet their use requirements. The CAA and the CWA are the primary safeguards against risks from air and water pollution, and understanding their implementation is critical to assure the effectiveness and fairness of pollution control across society. By examining the effects of different institutional arrangements on policy outcomes, the research can identify opportunities for re-configurations that will yield improved environmental governance.