Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-First Century

Authoritative and trusted, Environmental Policy once again brings together top scholars to evaluate the changes and continuities in American environmental policy since the late 1960s and their implications for the twenty-first century. Students will learn to decipher the underlying trends, institutional constraints, and policy dilemmas that shape today’s environmental politics.

The Tenth Edition examines how policy has changed within federal institutions and state and local governments, as well as how environmental governance affects private sector policies and practices. The book provides in-depth examinations of public policy dilemmas including fracking, food production, urban sustainability, and the viability of using market solutions to address policy challenges. Students will also develop a deeper understanding of global issues such as climate change governance, the implications of the Paris Agreement, and the role of environmental policy in the developing world. Students walk away with a measured yet hopeful evaluation of the future challenges policymakers will confront as the American environmental movement continues to affect the political process.

Norman J. Vig is the Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Science, Technology,

and Society emeritus at Carleton College. He has written extensively on environmental

policy, science and technology policy, and comparative politics and is coeditor

with Michael G. Faure of Green Giants? Environmental Policies of the United States

and the European Union (MIT Press, 2004) and with Regina S. Axelrod and David

Leonard Downie of The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy, 2nd ed.

(CQ Press, 2005).

Michael E. Kraft is professor emeritus of political science

and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Green

Bay. He is the author of, among other works, Environmental

Policy and Politics, 8th ed. (2022), and coauthor of

Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental

Performance (2011), with Mark Stephan and Troy D. Abel.

In addition, he is the coeditor of Environmental Policy:

New Directions in the 21st Century, 12th ed. (2025), with

Barry G. Rabe and Norman J. Vig; Toward Sustainable

Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy, 2nd ed. (2009), with

Daniel A. Mazmanian; and Business and Environmental Policy: Corporate Interests in the

American Political System (2007) and The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy (2013),

with Sheldon Kamieniecki. For over forty years, he taught courses in environmental policy and

politics, American government, Congress, and public policy analysis.