Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
public policy template that included private ownership as its central theme. Instead, the notion that scientific
management of the public lands would produce better long term results for the country was part of this new
legislation. During the policy innovation and consolidation phases, bureaucratic agencies were created to provide
civil service employees to scientifically manage a wide range of resource issues: minerals by the US Geologic
Survey beginning in 1879; irrigation projects by the Bureau of Reclamation beginning in 1902; forests by the US
Forest Service beginning in 1905.
The end of homesteading, or the conveyance of public lands into private ownership came in two stages.
Executive Order 6910 signed by Franklin Roosevelt on November 26, 1934 removed agricultural lands from
location (Woolley and Peters, 1999). This action eliminated the ability of the bureaucracy to register agricultural
homestead claims for the duration of Roosevelt
s presidency and until a subsequent president would overturn
the order, even though the Homestead Act of 1862 was still the law of the land. There was not a majority in
Congress willing to change the law until 1976 with passage of the National Land Policy and Management Act.
Old policy consensus positions erode slowly in a legislature, and in most instances the erosion comes only with
replacement of legislators and not by their conversion to new ideas. Members maintain intense connections
with the issues that initially attracted them to political service and the constituents who initially brought them to
Washington, DC. Two recent House committee chairmen defeated for re-election provide examples of this
connection to a policy position that is no longer held by a majority, either in the nation or the legislature. Wayne
Aspinall (Democrat, Colorado) who served from 1949 to 1973 and was the chairman of the House Interior and
Insular Affairs Committee, believed his role was to bring water to farmers who would let the desert bloom, even
after irrigation projects had become unpopular in the west, even among a majority of his own constituents
(Sturgeon, 2002). Similarly, Richard Pombo (Republican, California) who was defeated for re-election in 2006
while the sitting chairman of the House Resources Committee was an outspoken proponent of developing
petroleum resources in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge in spite of strong national opposition to that policy
(McCurdy, 2007b).
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Policy Collapse: 1980
2008
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The collapse of a policy monopoly is difficult to detect while it is happening. The normal give and take of
legislative activity can mask the gradual slide into ineffectiveness that is part of the collapse. The policy of
pragmatic agriculture supported by scientific evidence that was introduced by J.W. Powell in 1878 as an
innovation, moved through consolidation from 1902 to 1934. The monopoly phase that lasted through 1976
was marked by consensus in the legislature, the bureaucracy, and the citizenry that pragmatic resource
exploitation was desirable for the public lands. This monopoly was broken by a confluence of competing
ideas about the public lands from opposite ideological positions. The environmental protection attack on the
pragmatic exploitation consensus began with the Dinosaur National Monument dam authorization battle in
the early 1950s (McPhee, 1980, pp. 164
165), and the efforts to preserve portions of the public lands as
wilderness (Stegner, 1973). These citizen groups did not believe that the public managers were going far
enough to protect resources for future generations. The second attack on public lands management
came from the citizen groups who believed that the public managers were doing too much protecting,
and that government regulation was producing outcomes that were inferior to those that were made
by private enterprise based on market forces. The sagebrush rebellion against federal environmental protec-
tion regulations on the western lands swept Ronald Reagan into the presidency in the 1980 elections
(Culhane, 1984).
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The innovation and replacement phases look very similar from the standpoint of policy making. Both phases
produce ambiguous policy approaches (Figure 15.1.1). Predictability increases in the consolidation phase,
reaches a pinnacle during policy monopoly, and decreases during the policy collapse phase. Elections which
produce sustained periods of unified government where the majority party in the House of Representatives, the
Senate, and the party of the president are the same are indicative of policy consolidation or policy monopoly.
Divided government, or cycling of party control of Congress or the Presidency, is more typical of policy
collapse, replacement, and innovation. Steady policy decisions are difficult to maintain with ambiguous
directives from constituents delivered through the blunt instrument of elections. The key difference between
innovation and collapse may be one of outlook among participants in the policy process. Outsiders attempting
to change the status quo recognize that they must have a strategy for success, while insiders may
continue using strategies that have been successful historically, even when they no longer produce desired
effects.
