Policy Expansion in Local Government Environmental Policy Making

• Author: Le Anh Nguyen Long,Gwen Arnold
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12905
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019

465

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 4, pp. 465–476. © 2018 The

Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf

of American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12905.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The copyright line for this article was changed

on 12 September 2019 after original online

publication.

Policy Expansion in Local Government

Environmental Policy Making

Abstract: Relatively little is known about when, why, and how some jurisdictions “double down” on policy priorities,

rapidly adopting multiple measures tackling the same issue. Rapid policy expansion can emerge in fast-evolving,

uncertain, and contested policy arenas in which pressures for policy making are not satisfied, and even may be

strengthened, by initial policy innovation. This article analyzes local government policy making on high-volume

hydraulic fracturing by New York State municipalities from 2008 to 2012. Policy path dependence, peer influence,

and policy design appear to play a critical role in determining whether public officials respond to these pressures with

policy expansion. Initial policy innovations can open windows for policy participants to secure additional measures

that strengthen or enlarge the scope of action. Public officials and stakeholders seeking particular policy outcomes

should take a long view of the policy process while simultaneously remaining alert for opportunities afforded by

pressurized policy dilemmas.

Evidence for Practice

• When public officials make policy to address pressing environmental challenges, their actions can have

spillover effects, encouraging neighbors to behave similarly.

• Policy design can help lower costs that stakeholders may encounter when seeking to engage in the policy

process.

• Adoption of a policy innovation can open a window for entrepreneurial officials to secure adoption of

additional measures that strengthen or enlarge the scope of action.

• Institutions and capacities that develop around policies may shape subsequent policy making, even in arenas

that are not directly connected.

Gwen Arnold

Le Anh Nguyen Long

University of California, Davis

Le Anh Nguyen Long is a postdoctoral

scholar in the Center for Environmental

Policy and Behavior at the University of

California, Davis. She also teaches in

the Institute of Political Science at the

University of Muenster, Germany. Her

research interests include policy innovation

and diffusion, policy learning, and network

governance in the fields of high-volume

hydraulic fracturing and climate change

adaptation.

E-mail: lnlong@ucdavis.edu

Gwen Arnold is assistant professor

of environmental policy at the University

of California, Davis and codirector of

the Center for Environmental Policy and

Behavior there. She is also affiliated with

Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop

in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.

Her research interests include policy

design, adoption, and diffusion; policy

entrepreneurship; local government

decision making; and high-volume hydraulic

fracturing.

E-mail: gbarnold@ucdavis.edu

Between 2008 and 2012, New York

municipalities passed 358 laws and

resolutions opposing high-volume hydraulic

fracturing (fracking), a controversial, increasingly

widespread technique for mining hydrocarbons

from underground shale. Eventually, local policies

(in conjunction with state limitations) restricted

drilling on more than 60 percent of the state’s shale-

overlaying land, arguably making Governor Andrew

Cuomo’s 2014 decision to ban fracking statewide

fait accompli (Kaplan 2014). What factors drove

this wave of local policy making? And what can

practitioners learn from it?

A notable dimension of this local campaign was

the willingness of 78 municipalities to “double

down” on anti-fracking policy making, passing

multiple measures addressing different dimensions

of the issue. We find that serial adoption built and

sustained the movement’s momentum, creating

positive feedbacks that made a jurisdiction more

likely to adopt additional measures and encouraged

other jurisdictions to act. This phenomenon—policy

expansion, the adoption of two or more topically

similar policy innovations by the same jurisdiction

(Boehmke and Witmer 2004; Tolbert, Mossberger,

and McNeal 2008)—can manifest when policy

dilemmas remain “pressurized” by political conflict,

public contestation, and technical uncertainty. The

New York fracking case is textbook example of a

pressurized policy dilemma (Arnold, Long, and

Gottlieb 2017; Dodge and Lee 2017). So are many

of the “wicked” policy problems faced by officials

in a range of substantive areas, where uncertainty,

dynamism, and value conflicts can result in ongoing

demands for policy action.

Our analysis of New York municipal fracking policy

making demonstrates the critical role that policy

path dependence,1 peer jurisdiction behavior, and

stakeholder access play in determining whether public

officials respond to pressurized dilemmas with policy

expansion. Officials in jurisdictions where past policy

making has established a commitment to particular

Research Article