Chapter 10: The co-evolution of politics and policy: elections, entrepreneurship and EIA in the United States.

The article focuses on the co-evolution of politics and policy: elections, entrepreneurship and environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the United States. The tendency has been to see the essential dynamic in the history of EIA in the United States as arising out of a tension and conflict between recalcitrant bureaucratic insiders and reform-minded external intervenors. Most analyses have concluded that in the early years the courts were the key actors, egged on by environmental public interest law groups and a general pro-environment climate of opinion. In more recent years, as bureaucrats have learned to play the game by the courts new rules and as the courts themselves have learned the limits to their intervention, the reform potential of EIA has been devalued, even dismissed. It is as if students of environmental law and policy, having found that EIA has become routine and even welcomed by the bureaucrats it was imposed upon, are now prepared to abandon EIA and move on to new strategies of administrative reform.