Public policy, technology and the environment: a comparative inquiry into agricultural policy approaches and environmental outcomes in the US and Switzerland

Thesis/Dissertation · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1981

OSTI ID:6264894

Bloomfield, I C

This study examines the public policies of two Western industrialized democracies where the response to soil loss and water pollution has been quite dissimilar. The research goal is to distinguish political regime capabilities for making the trade-offs between short-run productivity and long-run resource deterioration that are necessary to protect the resource base. Policies in both had the effect of stimulating productivity growth by subsidizing the widespread adoption of industrial inputs which, unless carefully managed, lead to soil loss and water pollution. Subsequent federal efforts to reduce the surplus placed farmers in a cost-squeeze which stimulated further technological change and magnified the threat to the resource base. A second policy variable applied cross-nationally is the public policy response to evidence of resource deterioration. Only Switzerland has acted to stall and even reverse productivity growth. The research findings are: 1) that subsidizing the adoption of intensive agricultural technologies may lead to serious social costs; 2) that political regimes differ in their capacity to manage those costs; and 3) that such differences derive not from variance in institutional systems, but from culturally-based values which are expressed in and reinforced by the norm and rules which govern the political process.

• OSTI ID: 6264894
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
553000* -- Agriculture & Food Technology
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES
AGRICULTURE
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CONTROL
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
EUROPE
INDUSTRY
POLLUTION CONTROL
PRODUCTIVITY
PUBLIC POLICY
RESOURCE CONSERVATION
SOIL CONSERVATION
SWITZERLAND
TECHNOLOGY IMPACTS
TECHNOLOGY UTILIZATION
WATER POLLUTION CONTROL
WESTERN EUROPE