Politics of enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency

This dissertation investigates whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acts free from the influence of elected representatives when making enforcement policy choices, or whether external political actors affect the implementation of enforcement policy by the Agency. The dissertation addresses the debate in the literature over whether bureaucracies are free to make policy choices according to their own preferences, or whether they remain responsive to political overseers through mechanisms outside of the budgetary process. Chapter 1 presents a theoretical model that investigates whether the president\u27s and Congress\u27 preferences have a direct effect on the total number of enforcement cases taken by the EPA independent of budget. The model indicates that the Agency\u27s principal on whom enforcement imposes the highest political cost may directly influence EPA enforcement outcomes above and beyond budgetary considerations, because of the threat of that actor sanctioning the Agency administrator once he chooses how aggressively to enforce. The preferences of this principal only constrain the EPA administrator\u27s choice over how aggressively to enforce if the political cost imposed on the principal is high enough. If the political cost imposed by enforcement is relatively low, the administrator is free to direct the EPA to enforce as he chooses. In Chapter 2, a linear approximation of the theoretical model is estimated using OLS and multinomial logit techniques. The empirical model examines whether the president or the EPA\u27s primary Congressional oversight committees significantly influenced the total number of enforcement actions taken by the EPA or the distribution of enforcement outcomes across the three types of cases available to the Agency, independent of budget, from fiscal year 1972 to 1995. The empirical estimation indicates that the preferences of the president and Congress regarding the environment affect both the total number of enforcement cases taken by the EPA and the case mix pursued by the Agency. The empirical estimation also indicates, to the extent possible given the available data, that the presidents influence was more pervasive both in the area of total enforcement cases and case mix

Politics of enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency

This dissertation investigates whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acts free from the influence of elected representatives when making enforcement policy choices, or whether external political actors affect the implementation of enforcement policy by the Agency. The dissertation addresses the debate in the literature over whether bureaucracies are free to make policy choices according to their own preferences, or whether they remain responsive to political overseers through mechanisms outside of the budgetary process. Chapter 1 presents a theoretical model that investigates whether the president\u27s and Congress\u27 preferences have a direct effect on the total number of enforcement cases taken by the EPA independent of budget. The model indicates that the Agency\u27s principal on whom enforcement imposes the highest political cost may directly influence EPA enforcement outcomes above and beyond budgetary considerations, because of the threat of that actor sanctioning the Agency administrator once he chooses how aggressively to enforce. The preferences of this principal only constrain the EPA administrator\u27s choice over how aggressively to enforce if the political cost imposed on the principal is high enough. If the political cost imposed by enforcement is relatively low, the administrator is free to direct the EPA to enforce as he chooses. In Chapter 2, a linear approximation of the theoretical model is estimated using OLS and multinomial logit techniques. The empirical model examines whether the president or the EPA\u27s primary Congressional oversight committees significantly influenced the total number of enforcement actions taken by the EPA or the distribution of enforcement outcomes across the three types of cases available to the Agency, independent of budget, from fiscal year 1972 to 1995. The empirical estimation indicates that the preferences of the president and Congress regarding the environment affect both the total number of enforcement cases taken by the EPA and the case mix pursued by the Agency. The empirical estimation also indicates, to the extent possible given the available data, that the presidents influence was more pervasive both in the area of total enforcement cases and case mix

Spatial ecology of ectomycorrhizal fungal communities

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi evolved recently (about 150 million years ago), in many separate events, from saprotrophic fungi (brown‐rot, white‐rot and litter decaying) (Hibbett et al., 2000; Wang and Qiu, 2006; Tedersoo et al., 2010a; Kohler et al., 2015). Their importance to host carbon and nutrient cycling has been well documented (Smith and Read, 2008), but remains an area of fruitful research. ECM fungi associate with approximately 2% of known plant species, but those species tend to be large, woody, and dominant members of global ecosystems (Brundrett, 2009). Although research on ECM systems has typically focused on northern hemisphere temperate and boreal forests, the symbiosis is widespread, occurring in arctic, tundra, Mediterranean and tropical ecosystems as a result of biogeographical processes (Taylor and Alexander, 2005) and, in some cases, human intervention (e.g., Hayward et al., 2014). Physiologically, ECM fungi form structures that exist along a gradient from the microscopic (e.g., spores, individual hyphae, Hartig net) to the macroscopic (e.g., clusters of ECM root tips, tubercules, rhizomorphs, mycelial networks and sporocarps; Smith and Read, 2008). Thus, due to their biology, they have the potential to display multiple levels of spatial organization simultaneously. Understanding these different levels of organization, and how ECM fungi interact with their hosts, the soil environment, and other trophic groups, is key to making inferences about their biology and their impact on ecosystem‐level ecological processes