Environmental Sustainability and American Public Administration: Past, Present, and Future

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Protecting the natural environment and promoting environmental sustainability have become important objectives for U.S. policymakers and public administrators at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Institutions of American government, especially at the federal level, and the public administrators who work inside of those institutions, play a crucial role in developing and implementing environmental sustainability policies. This book explores these salient issues logically. First, it explores fundamental concepts such as what it means to be environmentally sustainable, how economic issues affect environmental policy, and the philosophical schools of thought about what policies ought to be considered sustainable. From there, it focuses on processes and institutions affecting public administration and its role in the policy process. Accordingly, it summarizes the rise of the administrative state in the United States and then reviews the development of federal environmental laws and policies with an emphasis on late twentieth century developments. This book also discusses the evolution of American environmentalism by outlining the history of the environmental movement and the growth of the environmental lobby. Finally, this book synthesizes the information to discuss how public administration can promote environmental sustainability.

Reviews

This book illustrates the critical roles played, challenges faced, and choices made by public managers in the development of environmental policy in the United States, and that will confront them if sustainability is to become a central animating principle of governance in the United States. It is broad in intellectual scope, balanced in perspective, and written in accessible prose. Readers new to the fields of public administration or environmental governance will gain a basic a sense for major issues and actors in each, how the two relate to each other, and how both fit into historical debates over the proper role of the government in a democratic republic. They will also appreciate that linking the two to advance sustainability will not be a task for the timid, impatient, or strategically-challenged in our Madisonian system. -- Robert F. Durant, American University
In this lucid and broad sweeping introduction to the US environmental movement, Martinez introduces the reader to the political and economic institutions undergirding the nation as necessary to understanding the environmental movement and the quest for sustainability. It is equally suited for college and advanced secondary school introductory classes and the lay reader as an approachable primer to the myriad of ideas, institutions, and seminal figures involved from the conservation movement of the early 20th century to the modern environmental and sustainability movement today. -- Daniel A. Mazmanian, University of Southern California

Author Bio

J. Michael Martinez teaches political science at Kennesaw State University and works as an environmental affairs representative for a manufacturing company.