Weathering the Storm: The Durability of Energy and Environmental Policies in the Wake of 21st Century Corporate Malfeasance

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Date
2019-05
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Abstract
The Trump Administration’s attempts to reverse a wide range federal policies direct attention to investigations of policy durability and policy change. The California electricity crisis, the Gulf oil spill, the Solyndra controversy, and the Dieselgate vehicle emissions scandal provide four empirical situations for understanding which dynamics shape policy durability and policy change in the twenty-first century. This paper examines the two main contemporary approaches for predicting policy durability and change by creating a model for each approach utilizing the variables most important to the approach. This paper then applies those models to the four cases to evaluate the accuracy of each model for each of the four cases. The results demonstrate that the two main contemporary approaches – one centered on policy design and policy results to ensure policy durability and another centered on the ability of major events to trigger news coverage, popular interest, and policy change – exhibit weaknesses when applied to real world cases from the twenty-first century.
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Keywords
policy durability, offshore drilling, California Electricity Crisis, Electricity deregulation, energy, Solyndra, Dieselgate
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