The New Environmental Regulation

Daniel Fiorino is a highly respected expert on public administration, who has focused especially on regulatory reform. Fiorino may have the the wettest finger in the air of any major expert writer on regulatory policy. He should, because he has for some time headed a program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that evaluates regulatory policy and effectiveness. Consequently, he probably has as much in-depth knowledge of how our system has been working since the middle 1980s as any person in America. After briefly reviewing regulatory history, evaluating needs for change, and a large number of "Reinvention" experiments in the Clinton Administration, Fiorino points out that the basic assumption of the 1970s environmental laws that continue to form the bedrock of the U.S. system are based on the assumption that environmental protection and business was a zero sum game. In other words, there had to be a top down system of tough laws and compliance requirements or powerful economic forces would always prevail over environmental protection. Recent European experience has shown that this assumption is not necessarily valid. Moreover leading nations in the European Union, like the Netherlands, have not only gone past us in many respects in enviromental performance (including dealing with global environmental change) but have done so while achieving strong performance in industrial sectors. In the last two of seven chapters, Fiorino reviews "what has worked and what has not worked", for example, voluntary programs can't just be add ons to the core system, but must be integral parts or they have little chance of success. It's remarkable and infrequent that a person with responsibilities within our federal regulatory bodies is willing to put themselves out on a limb and discuss issues so candidly. Not surprisingly, the Fiorino book is being adopted by a number of university departments for their courses in U.S. environmental policy. The last