How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy

Sarah S. Elkind argues that the intense interest-group politics of local, regional, and national environmental policy during the mid-twentieth century demonstrate the disproportionate (though not hegemonic) influence of business organizations along with increasing criticism of federal power—a combination she subsumes under the rubric of localism. Departing from Los Angeles in the 1920s and ending in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, Elkind analyzes five battles over pollution control and resource use. The composite portrait reveals a pluralism of neither the virtuous Madisonian variety nor the pragmatic census version of the postwar era; instead, Elkind details a cynical scramble for advantage in which attempts to disrupt established “clientelistic” arrangements drew accusations of “special interest” at the local level and “socialism” at the federal level. Conflict among economic groups, rather than simple elitism, lies at the heart of Elkind's stories: a public-beach movement pitted oil producers against real estate interests; household incinerators, automobiles, and heavy industries contributed to smog, prompting efforts by homeowners and manufacturers to impose restrictions on each other rather than themselves; upstream El Monte fought downstream Long Beach over flood control on the San Gabriel River; and Arizona agriculture competed with southern California's Imperial Valley and power-hungry cities over the Hoover Dam. Elkind hints that an insufficiently inclusive political process minimized the influence of less organized interests in these fights, though it is hard to see what the addition of more voices would have achieved, since the system (at all levels) seemed incapable of satisfactorily incorporating the groups that did manage to be heard. That “beleaguered” officials should gravitate toward organizations that provided “political services” such as “information, policy ideas, and allies” is, therefore, neither surprising nor especially sinister: an aggregator of interests such as the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, though never quite capable of offering a consensus, was a godsend in debates that wore on for decades (pp. 52, 2, 80

Hegemony · Localism · Pluralism (philosophy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Law · Public Administration