Good Cops, Bad Cops
A response to "Beyond
Backyard Environmentalism" by Charles Sabel, Archon Fung, and Bradley
Karkainen
DeWitt John
Sabel, Fung, and Karkkainen have a clear fix on the six-year-old
debate about what others are calling "civic environmentalism" or "second
generation environmental policy." They describe this new form of governance
accurately:
1. It engages diverse
citizens, community leaders, polluters, and regulators
in custom-designing environmental
solutions for individual places and industries.
2. Regulators allow flexibility to businesses to redesign products, services,
and production processes to minimize environmental impacts while still making
a profit.
3. Regulators allow flexibility when the environmental results can be better.
They–and the public–demand
accountability, which requires vastly improved information about environmental
conditions.
4. New technologies for monitoring environmental conditions will help provide
such information, but scientists must work as peers with citizens to collect
data and interpret what it means.
This is the happy half of the story. The other half is that these
new ways cannot replace strictly enforced national standards. We need both the
"good cop" of government willing to empower and support local problem-solving
efforts, and the "bad cop" of government standing ready to enforce
national standards, if necessary. Often the good cop is not persuasive if there
is no bad cop waiting in the next room. The challenge is how to operate a tough
regulatory regime alongside flexible civic deliberation.
Sabel, Fung, and Karkkainen might address more clearly three limits
on civic environmentalism.
Borders:
Many forms of air and water pollution cross borders. It is often difficult
to get all interested parties around the negotiating table. Federal officials
end up representing out-of-town and national interests. Recently thirty states
negotiated a remarkable agreement about interstate movement of ozone. But
in the end, they asked EPA to incorporate the agreement into national regulations,
and then some parties to the agreement promptly litigated the continuing points
of disagreement.
Time:
Collaborative problem-solving is a demanding, often exhausting process. In
most communities, citizens, local leaders, and businesses will keep talking
only when there is a crisis and when there is a good chance of a mutually
rewarding breakthrough. Often it is easier just to follow the prescriptive
regulation because you can easily buy technology off the shelf to comply with
the law. A multi-year study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Dow
Chemical recently uncovered dozens of ways to prevent pollution while also
cutting costs. The returns on investment were excellent. But the dollars saved
were so small that the company would not have bothered if NRDC had not helped
out.
Money:
Environmental issues have a consensual element: we all like clean air and
water. But sometimes environmental politics are about real differences. Often
businesses save millions by emitting a bit more pollution. So consensual problem-solving
works best when there is money to pay off the losers–for example, tax
breaks for environmental equipment or purchases of conservation easements
to protect species, watersheds, or open space. To make backyard or civic environmentalism
work, the federal government must not only offer regulatory flexibility but
also put up cash. The Chesapeake Bay program, for example, is sustained partly
by a powerful Maryland senator who sits on the EPA appropriations subcommittee.
The trend toward civic environmentalism is unstoppable. Citizens
do demand answers that fit local conditions. New monitoring technologies help
supply the information needed to measure performance and ensure accountability.
Twenty moderate Republican and Democrat members of Congress recently offered
"Second Generation" legislative proposals, paralleling proposals in
a 1997 report by the National Academy of Public Administration, which called
the old EPA system "broken." Congress may be ready to invest billions
of federal budget surpluses in protecting lands and water.
But there is a long way to go. Innovations like those which Sabel,
Fung, and Karkkainen celebrate are still "marginal," the Academy reported.
Statutes offer little encouragement to customized local problem-solving. Engineers
and lawyers skilled in drafting and defending detailed prescriptive regulations
still dominate agencies. Indeed, since 1999 progress towards flexibility and
has been slow–perhaps slowing.
The challenge to environmental agencies and to advocates of second
generation environmental governance is to explain how to fit the good cop and
the bad cop into the same system. For example, flexibility includes devolution
to states, but states collect most data and they need different kinds of data
than federal regulators need to ensure states do not abuse flexibility. So EPA
must simultaneously command and devolve.
It is liberating to uncover a new way of addressing public concerns.
The enthusiastic claims of Sabel, Fung, and Karkkainen have merit. Whatever
its name, new forms of environmental governance will reinvigorate our republic
and protect the environment more efficiently. But we must draw on multiple traditions.
We can progress in a Jacksonian direction–though perhaps Toqueville is
a better guide. But we need Madisonian pluralism too.
Originally published in the October/November
1999 issue of Boston Review
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