The Politics of Regulatory change: A Tale of Two Agencies, Richard A. Harris & Sidney M. Milkis, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 324pp.
Politics; of general applicability to environmental problems; written for the third party participant.
The Politics of Regulatory change: A Tale of Two Agencies is the result of
in-depth interviews with a long list of federal agencies and interest group employees concerning the change in regulatory politics from the New Deal era of the 1930s to the reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
The Politics of Regulatory change: A Tale of Two Agencies is required reading for ARSC 5010/7010 as taught by Dr. Guy Burgess and Professor Charles Lester. This work will be of interest to those who seek an understanding of the political nature of governmental regulation. The authors fault other works on regulatory change which fail to examine the historical and philosophical foundations for that change. They assert that the only correct interpretation of regulatory change must arise out of an understanding of those foundations. Toward this end they offer an examination of the emergence of environmentalism andconsumerism in the 1960s and the relationship between this emergence and the drive toward a more participatory democracy.
The authors examine regulatory regimes and address the concept of inertial forces. and their relationships to regulatory change. The changes rooted in the 1960s are chronicled in a list of social regulatory measures which were enacted during the early and mid-1970s. A chapter is spent focused on the regulatory program of the Reagan administration. The authors insist that for the Reagan administration "... regulatory relief was viewed not merely as an exercise in sound economic policy, but as a crucial battle in a war against ideologues and policies deemed to be hostile to the vitality of a free-enterprise system." Three deregulatory moves by the Reagan administration are discussed: deregulation by executive administration, transferring regulatory authority to the states, and legislative reform. After this discussion the authors address the limits of administrative action.
Chapter five is devoted to an examination of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The authors present a brief discussion of the creation and early history of the commission. In this context specifics of the New Deal and the advent of the consumer movement; the relationship between the FTC and the public lobby; and the FTC's role in deregulation are discussed. The next chapter is concerned with the origins and history of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the siege waged against it by the Reagan administration. In regards to the latter discussion, the authors assert that the EPA came under such heavy fire because,"... of all the new social regulation, that dealing with environmental quality imposed the highest compliance costs on business firms ... and created the greatest controversies about relations between Washington and the states. The authors close with a discussion of "... social reform, American democracy, and the future of regulatory politics" the primary focus of which is; the prospects and limitations of regulatory change.
The Politics of Regulatory change: A Tale of Two Agencies is a thorough examination of the regulatory change which took place during the 1970s and 1980s and the role and effects upon the Federal Trade Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency.
T. A. O'Lonergan
G11HARR