Environmental Regulatory Approaches in the United States: Theoretical and Historical Views

This paper examines U.S. environmental regulatory approaches with two competingperspectives; one pays more attention to environmental protection, the other to economiccompetitiveness. Based on the relationship between these two, this paper historically analyzes U.S. environmental policies from the 1970s to 2010. Adopting Kingdon’s multiplestreams theory(so-called policy window theory), this study asks: How and in what directiondid U.S. environmental regulation evolve from the 1970s to 2010? What factors haveaffected the environmental regulatory approach in the U.S.? And finally, what implications can be drawn from the case of U.S. environmental regulation? U.S. environmentalregulatory policies have historically reflected three streams(problems, policies, and politics)in different combinations depending on presidential periods. This study concludes that,to solve controversial and complex environmental problems (e.g., international environmental issues, government-industry related issues), more collaborative and flexibleapproaches are needed.