Pesticides and Politics: The Life Cycle of a Public Issue - Hardcover

Bosso, Christopher J.

4.12

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780822935476: Pesticides and Politics: The Life Cycle of a Public Issue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822935473 ISBN 13: 9780822935476

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989

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Winner of the 1988 Policy Studies Organization Book Award

Among the more dramatic changes brought by World War II was the widespread introduction of new synthetic chemical pesticides - products welcomed as technological answers to a whole host of agricultural problems. The dangers posed by these products were often ignored in the rush to get them onto the market. Federal policy primarily reflected the interests of those promoting the new technologies. The risks associated with pesticides, as yet ill-understood, continued to be played down during the 1950s, despite their sudden emergence as a public problem as a result of health scares and fish and wildlife deaths following massive pest eradication campaigns. These events, together with the publication of Rachel Carson’sSilent Spring, spawned the environmental movement of the 1960s.

Dramatic changes came in the early 1970s as environmental values permeated the institutions and dynamics of American politics. Such changes produced new priorities, and - in part - a redirection in federal policy on chemical pesticides. The National Environmental Policy Act, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, congressional reforms, and broad popular support opened opportunities for those seeking to alter pesticides policy. But by the mid-1980s, after more than a decade of conflict, that policy is in limbo, caught between powerful environmental, economic, and political forces.

How did this happen?

Pesticides and Politics traces the long battle over control of pesticides through an analytical framework that is at the same time historical, comparative, and theoretical. Christopher J. Bosso’s account analyzes the responses to this complex problem by commercial interests, government, the media, and the public, and shows how the issue evolved over forty years of technological and political change.

Bosso’s research leads to a number of insights about the U.S. structure of governance. It shows how the system itself determines who gains access to decision making and who is excluded, and how conflicts are redefined as the range of interests attached to them grows. Bosso concludes that for fundamental institutional reasons, as well as political ones, federal pesticides policy lies stalled and impotent in the mid-1980s.

Relying heavily on government documents, the sizable literature on environmental politics, and interviews with relevant policy actors,Pesticides and Politics will enlighten students of the public policy process, and also be useful in courses in policy making and policy analysis.

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Review:

Christopher Bosso provides us not only with an excellent historical account of the maturation of pesticides policy, but also with an iterative interpretation of the relationship between politics and policy which will inform students, scholars and policy-makers alike. " American Politics Group Newsletter"" Bosso, who focuses on the period from 1947 to 1986, relies on a historical case study approach. However, he borrows aptly from several conceptual frameworks to highlight the broader significance of specific developments and findings. . . . the book is well-written and highly readable. . . . "Pesticides and Politics" is also a sobering book, as indeed it ought to be. " Land Economics"" Of these three works [under review] the best analysis of environmental regulation in the United States is Christopher Bosso's. . . . He successfully illustrates how policy has lagged behind blossoming knowledge of soils and water during the last generation. " Journal of Forest History"" "Christopher Bosso provides us not only with an excellent historical account of the maturation of pesticides policy, but also with an iterative interpretation of the relationship between politics and policy which will inform students, scholars and policy-makers alike.""--American Politics Group Newsletter" "Bosso, who focuses on the period from 1947 to 1986, relies on a historical case study approach. However, he borrows aptly from several conceptual frameworks to highlight the broader significance of specific developments and findings. . . . the book is well-written and highly readable. . . . "Pesticides and Politics" is also a sobering book, as indeed it ought to be.""--Land Economics" "Of these three works [under review] the best analysis of environmental regulation in the United States is Christopher Bosso's. . . . He successfully illustrates how policy has lagged behind blossoming knowledge of soils and water during the last generation.""--Journal of Forest History"

About the Author:

Christopher J. Bosso is professor and associate dean, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University.

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