Expanding publics and environmental politics : an inquiry into the significance of NEPA

This thesis is an inquiry into the significance of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). It provides a historical sociological account of how the structural conditions of the U.S. political economy have led to a shift from subgovernments to issue networks in numerous policy domains and puts forth NEPA as an example of the sort of structural mechanism catalyzing such change. Two case studies involving the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) portion of the NEPA process are presented in an effort to show how compositional characteristics of the publics that emerged to debate the issues affected the behavior of the government. Methods involve a multiple-case study strategy that utilizes content analysis, field research and historical analysis. The two cases are contrasted with regard to the size of the publics and the diversity of interests represented in the publics. The cases are also contrasted with regard to the degree of caution exhibited in the government's efforts to maintain legitimacy. The federal agency in question for both cases is the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The findings reveal evidence suggesting that the case involving the larger and more diverse of the two EIS publics was also the case in which TVA exercised the most cautious behavior. The conclusions reached from this is that the saliency and visibility of an EIS issue can affect the way an agency responds in developing the environmental analysis of an EIS; and that active expansion of the public dialogue associated with NEPA and the EIS process is a positive factor in efforts to ensure some mitigation of the negative environmental impacts associated with large scale resource development.