How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (The Luther H. Hodges Jr. and Luther H. ... Business, Entrepreneurship and Public Policy) - Softcover

Elkind, Sarah S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1469618974 ISBN 13: 9781469618975

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014

Synopsis

Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics.

Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

About this title

Review:

Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduate students and above.--Choice

An important contribution to the scholarship of American political culture during the middle decades of the twentieth century.--H-Environment"

Elkind does a superb job of bringing to life the nuances of Los Angeles environmental crises and providing the reader with a context for understanding them.--Enterprise and Society

An important monograph [in] the growing literature on the metropolitan development of the American West.--Western Historical Quarterly

A useful resource.--Technology and Culture

[A] researched and convincingly argued study.--American Historical Review

[Elkind's] clear-eyed and methodical explanation is necessary reading for scholars of the U.S. West and the environment, and for anyone who hopes to understand how well-organized business groups have shaped American political culture and the American landscape.--American Historical Review

About the Author:

Sarah S. Elkind is associate professor of history and director of environmental studies at San Diego State University. She is author of Bay Cities and Water Politics: The Battle for Resources in Boston and Oakland, which won the Abel Wolman Prize from the Public Works Historical Society.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1469618974
• ISBN 13: 9781469618975
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 283