Environmental protection and economic development.
Feiock, Richard C.
Symposium Introduction
Conflict between state and local environmental protection and
economic growth has captured increased attention from the media and
elected officials (Feiock and Stream, 2001). Despite general public
support for environmental goals, policies designed to manage growth and
protect resources are controversial and contentious because they are
inherently regulatory and can therefore conflict with private property
rights. Arthur Denzau and Barry Weingast (1982) argue that there is no
justification for comprehensive land use control. Complete property
rights are a combination of the right of exclusiveness, right to
potential income, and the right of voluntary transferability, if these
three criteria are met then controls are not needed, only enforcement of
the rights (Denzau and Weingast, 1982: pp. 389-393). However, lacking
such a system of "perfect" property rights, problems occur
when there are incompatible uses and barriers to private bargaining and
contracting.
At the state and local level, the politics of development and
environmental management are shaped by competing interests including:
developers, business and pro-growth interests, environmentalists,
anti-growth groups, and governmental units. The tension between these
groups and their perspectives shape the politics for growth decisions.
The potential for conflict over the environment increases with the
complexity of environmental protection and growth management strategies.
Conflict ensues from the additive effect of overlapping regulations
(e.g., vertical tensions between the state and local relationship as to
uses of land and natural resources and horizontal tensions between
neighboring and nested governments). Robyn Turner (1990: pp. 38-39)
suggested that there are three basic issues that need to be addressed if
state and local policy is to reconcile competing growth interests: level
of control, either consolidation or fragmentation of the process; level
of discretion, or how much choice is afforded to the local actors by the
state; and level of distributional costs and benefits, not just who
benefits and who pays, but the quality of services, availability of
services, and the payment for the services.
This symposium explores these relationships at the state and local
levels. The original empirical analyses reported here demonstrate that
tradeoffs between environment and growth are common but not inevitable.
The empirical work and the concluding essay suggest ways in which these
tradeoffs may be overcome. The first five articles examine state level
policy over time and employ pooled cross-sectional or event history
designs to identify the development impacts of environmental policy
across time and space. The lead article by Moon-Gi Jeong and Antonio
Tavares examines the economic impact state growth management legislation
has on economic development. Christopher Stream investigates the impact
of state regulatory policy on job growth. The impacts of regulatory
stringency and political factors on investment are then examined by
Joohun Kang.
Collaborative strategies or partnerships provide a mechanism to
bring environmental and development interests together. Carl Dasse
applies event history analysis to identify when and why state
legislatures choose to adopt collaborative strategies for natural
resource management. This is followed by an investigation by Jill Satran
of what motivates state governments in the U.S. to engage in either
economic development or environmental agreements with other nations.
The final two empirical articles focus on tradeoffs between
environmental and economic values at the local level. Jill Tao examines
a case study of conflict in a rural Florida community where efforts to
clean up and regulate the quality of water fouled by industrial
pollution threatened to result in economic decline and job loss in the
community. The relationship between economic development and water
management is examined by Linda Johnson. She finds that economic forces
are influencing patterns of water withdrawal across local governments.
The concluding essay by Hyung-Jun Park and Richard Feiock explains the
role of social capital in overcoming tradeoffs between economic growth
and environmental protection.
References
Denzau, Arthur and Barry Weingast. 1982. "Recent Developments
in Zoning and Property Rights. Forward: The Political Economy of Land
Use Regulation." Urban Law Annual. 23: pp. 385-405.
Feiock Richard. C. and Christopher C. Stream. 2001.
"Environmental Protection and Economic Development: A False
Tradeoff?" Public Administration Review. 61 (May/June): pp.
272-280.
Turner, Robyn. 1990. "New Rules for the Growth Game: The Use
of Rational State Standards in Land Use Policy." Journal of Urban
Affairs. 12: pp. 35-47.
Biographical Sketch
Richard C. Feiock (rfeiock@garnet.acns.fsu.edu) is a Professor and
Ph.D. Program Director of the Askew School, Florida State University.
Richard C. Feiock
Askew School of Public Administration and
Department of Political Science
Florida State University
