Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-First Century

Evaluating environmental policy while considering the lasting implications of today's environmental controversies for the future is no easy task, especially given the dramatic changes of the past couple years. Assessing new strategies prompted by the George W. Bush administration, Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft head a team of distinguished contributors to help students make sense of the underlying trends, institutional shortcomings, and policy dilemmas that shape the contentious world of environmental politics. Accessibly written, each chapter attempts to explain the most important developments in environmental politics in recent decades-at the local, state, national, and international levels-and at the same time points to new policy directions for the future. Environmental Policy is essential reading for students of public policy and for anyone who is interested in the current debate over reforming environmental policies and promoting sustainable development in the future.

Norman J. Vig is 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 E. Kraft) of Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century, Fifth Edition (2003). His most recent book is Green Giants? Environmental Policies of the United States and the European Union, coedited with Michael G. Faure (2004).

Michael E. Kraft is professor of political science and public affairs and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. He is the author of, among other works, Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives (2004) with Scott R. Furlong, Environmental Policy and Politics, 3rd ed. (2003), and the coeditor of Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste (1993), with Riley E. Dunlap and Eugene A. Rosa; Environmental Policy: New Directions in the 21st Century, 5th ed. (2002) and Technology and Politics (1988), with Norman J. Vig; and Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (1999), with Daniel A. Mazmanian.