Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities.

• Position: Book Review

ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE RECONSIDERED: CHALLENGES, CHOICES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

Edited by Robert F. Durant, Daniel J. Fiorino, and Rosemary O'Leary. 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142: MIT Press, July 2004. (800) 405-1619. www.mitpress.mit.edu. ISBN 0-262-04218-5. 536 pp. $35.00 Paperback.

This survey of current issues and controversies in environmental policy and management is unique in its thematic mix, broad coverage of key debates and approaches, and in-depth analysis of concepts treated less thoroughly in other texts. The contributing authors, all distinguished scholars or practitioners, offer a comprehensive examination of key topics in environmental governance today, including perspectives from environmental economics, democratic theory, public policy, law, political science, and public administration.

Many are calling for a change in the bureaucratic, adversarial, technology-based regulatory approach that is the basis for much environmental policy--a move from "rule-based" to "results-based" regulation. Each of the 13 chapters in Environmental Governance Reconsidered critically examines one aspect of this "second generation" of environmental reform, assesses its promise versus its performance to date, and points out future challenges and opportunities. The first section of the book...