Harold Lasswell (1936) defined politics as the exploration of "who gets what,
when, and how." As such, one of the central concerns of democratic governance is the
role that affected interests play not only in politics, but in the implementation of adopted
policies as well. In this dissertation, I use both comparative method case studies, as well
as pooled-time series statistical techniques, to examine the effects of political, economic
and market forces, and competition between the affected interests on implementation of
the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. The findings of this, as well
as previous, research shows that state-level implementing agencies have some discretion
in enforcement activities; however, closer examination shows that this discretion is
rarely used. This lack of use of regulatory discretion by the state-level implementing
agencies suggests that in most states, there is either sufficient competition between the
affected interests to neutralize the excessive use of discretion in enforcement activity, or
that there is insufficient pressure placed on the implementing agencies by the affected
interests to warrant the use of discretion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/85961 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Pennington, Michael Sean |
| Contributors | Meier, Kenneth J. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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