Civics: A new study suggests political considerations may influence the enforcement of federal environmental law.
There are many reasons why administrative regulation may be preferable to nuisance law for dealing with environmental pollution. Among other things, regulations may provide clearer standards of what sorts of conduct is or is not permitted and may provide clearer incentives for firms to reduce polluting behavior. One potential downside, however, is that administrative regulation may be more subject to political influence.
If regulatory agencies are responsible to elected officials, we might expect this to affect their enforcement efforts. In particular, if we assume that polluting firms are a politically important constituency, we might expect enforcement efforts to be less stringent in closely contested (i.e. “battleground”) jurisdictions. A new paper, “The Selective Enforcement of Government Regulations: Battleground States, State Regulators, and the Environmental Protection Agency” by Huseyin Gulen and Brett W. Myers, recently published in the Journal of Law & Economics, suggests just such an effect.
