Are Republicans Bad for the Environment?

Partisanship

Although environmental issues now highlight partisan polarization in the United States, issues relating to the environment were fairly non-partisan until the 1980s (Daniels et al. 2012). Historically, Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon enacted key policies protecting American lands and environment, and there was a general sense of bipartisanship surrounding many of the legislative successes of the mid-20th century (Ruckelshaus 1985). In recent decades, however, clear partisan and ideological differences on environmental policies have appeared in the party platforms, legislative behavior, and citizens’ attitudes (Daniels et al. 2012; Dunlap and McCright 2008; Shipan and Lowry 2001).

One factor contributing to this growing polarization is the composition of the party coalitions. More specifically, political parties are made up of coalitions or networks of interests, including interest groups and activists that work to get candidates elected in exchange for support on their political positions or policy goals (Bawn et al. 2012). Whereas environmental groups are key actors in the Democratic Party network, business groups and corporate interests are more influential in the Republican Party, which tend to be less supportive of using government regulations to address environmental problems (e.g., Grossmann and Dominguez 2009; Koger, Masket, and Noel 2010). Moreover, conservative activists and groups more hostile to environmental policies and regulations have gained strength in the Republican Party in recent decades, pushing the party to the right on environmental issues (Layzer 2012; McCright, Xiao, and Dunlap 2014; Turner and Isenberg 2018).

Furthermore, public opinion now shows substantial divisions between Republican and Democratic voters on environmental issues. Although a majority of Democrats and Republicans are supportive of protecting the environment, the percentage of Republicans supportive of environmental protections has decreased over time, resulting in more polarized views on this issue (Daniels et al. 2012). In general, Republicans and conservatives are less supportive of using government regulations or increasing government spending to protect the environment than Democrats and liberals (Konisky, Milyo, and Richardson 2008; McCright, Xiao, and Dunlap 2014). In turn, previous research has found a linkage between public opinion and environmental policy (e.g., Fowler 2016b; Johnson, Brace, and Arceneaux 2005; Vandeweerdt, Kerremans, and Cohn 2016). Therefore, as Republican voters are less favorable toward environmental regulations, Republican officials may be less likely to enact environmental protections or enforce environmental regulations.

As a result of the different interests in their party coalitions and voters, the national Democratic and Republican Party platforms have contained significant differences on environmental policies and issues since 1976 (Kamieniecki 1995). The Democratic platforms have supported increased spending on environmental programs and more government regulations in an effort to protect the environment. In comparison, the Republican platforms place more emphasis on economic growth and private interests protecting the environment, and there is little support for government regulations. More recently, Republican politicians have also opposed proposals to address climate change, which has helped fuel the perception that Republicans are bad for the environment (Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez 2016). These trends extend to the state level, where Democratic Party platforms devote more attention to environmental issues than Republican Party platforms (Coffey 2014). Although Republican platforms do address environmental issues, protecting the environment or addressing environmental concerns are not top priorities. Consequently, Republican officeholders may be less likely to pass and enforce government regulations, resulting in worse environmental outcomes than when Democrats are in relevant positions of power.

From these growing partisan differences in the party coalitions, issue agendas, and opinion on environmental issues, we expect partisan differences in environmental outcomes. Partisan control provides the opportunity to affect the environment through the passage and implementation of environmental policies and regulations. Republicans in executive and legislative offices can prevent, weaken, fail to enforce, or remove environmental regulations. Republicans can also decrease spending on environmental programs or place a higher priority on other policy issues or interests, all of which can affect the quality of the environment. Indeed, a sizable majority of citizens believe the Democratic Party can do a better job dealing with environmental issues, and many expect Republicans in public office to result in worse environmental outcomes than Democrats (Pew Research Center 2017).

Furthermore, there is some evidence that political control can affect environmental outcomes. Conservatives have successfully relaxed some existing environmental regulations and have prevented or delayed the adoption of new ones by Congress and federal agencies (Layzer 2012). Through the passage and implementation of relevant policies and practices, pro-environmental voting records in states’ Congressional delegations contribute to reductions in greenhouse emissions (Dietz et al. 2015). In addition, Democrats in state legislatures have responded to temperature anomalies by sponsoring more climate change bills, while Republicans are unresponsive to climate anomalies (Bromley-Trujillo, Holman, and Sandoval 2019).

Drawing from partisan differences on environmental policies and previous research, we expect Republican officeholders to negatively affect environmental outcomes. However, the complicated nature of policy making and policy implementation, especially for environmental policy, may limit the effect of partisan control on policy outcomes. In particular, interbranch relationships in policy making may weaken or condition the translation of partisan preferences into policy outcomes. Public opinion and the judicial system can also act as checks, but we focus on the potential complications resulting from executive and legislative involvement in environmental policy making and intergovernmental responsibility for environmental policy. These vertical (executive–legislative) and horizontal (federal–state) interbranch relationships create a complex governance system that may affect the relationship between partisan control and environmental outcomes. By considering this complex governance structure for environmental policy when evaluating the effect of partisan control on environmental outcomes, we help fill a gap in previous research that focuses on one branch or one level of government.

Executive versus Legislative Power

The vertical checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches create a limitation to their respective powers, potentially blocking a direct relationship between partisan control and environmental outcomes. The back and forth of these checks and balances is most obvious in the shared authority over the policy making and budgeting process, which previous research connects to environmental outcomes over time (Bacot and Dawes 1997; Woods 2008; Woods, Konisky, and Bowman 2009). However, legislative and executive powers also differ in their influence over how environmental policies are implemented (Wood and Waterman 1991), a key mechanism for influencing how policies will affect environmental outcomes.

On one hand, legislatures have the power to influence programs through their role in policy making, the budget, and their agency oversight authorities. Previous scholars argue that legislative oversight of agency rule-making plays an important role in institutionalizing environmental policy implementation. To this end, legislatures may seek to create rigid rules to reduce uncertainty about how policies may be implemented in the future in response to changing political coalitions (Potoski 1999, 2002; Wood and Bohte 2004). As such, if they do not trust the agency to implement a law as desired, state legislatures attempt to control agencies by passing more specific bills (Huber, Shipan, and Pfahler 2001). This may reduce the influence of executive partisanship as implementers have less discretion to respond to political influences.

On the other hand, executives wield significant power over administrative agencies. In this role, executives have the power to shape how diligently or effectively environmental policies are implemented. Although the discretion given to the bureaucracy varies, executives appoint key positions in both federal and state bureaucracies, including agency heads, who in turn lead development of processes and rules to implement laws and programs (Dometrius 2002; Howell and Lewis 2002; Woods and Baranowski 2007; Wood and Waterman 1991). In addition, at the federal level, presidents in recent decades have begun to use the tools of administrative presidencies to centralize power over the environmental agenda. For instance, presidents Bush and Obama used executive orders and influence over agency rule-making processes to shape how environmental policies were implemented. Although there was some push-back from Congress, both presidents enjoyed considerably more power in this regard than their predecessors (Konisky and Woods 2016, 2018; Rabe 2007). At the state level, gubernatorial powers vary, which may allow some to play more important roles than others. For governors with few institutional powers, it may require more political energy to affect how environmental policies are implemented, compared with those that have centralized control over agencies and budgets (Barrilleaux 1999; Barrilleaux and Berkman 2003; Beyle and Ferguson 2008).

However, it is difficult to determine how much influence partisan control of one branch carries without considering partisan control of other key political offices in the environmental policy implementation system. The role of both branches in environmental policy making may condition or weaken the relationship between partisan control and environmental outcomes. In other words, do the effects of Republican presidents depend on which party controls Congress? Or, do the effects of Republican-controlled state legislatures depend on who is governor?

It is also possible that legislatures have an indirect influence on environmental outcomes as they depend on the executive branch to implement environmental policies, despite their policy making, budgeting, and oversight powers. On the contrary, executive branches may have more capacity to unilaterally influence how policies are implemented. This difference is potentially important to determining in which situations Republicans are bad for the environment, if any. While we expect partisan control of the executive and legislative branches to affect environmental policy outcomes, the involvement of each branch in policy making and implementation may weaken this relationship without partisan control of both branches. We also expect these relationships to differ between state and federal levels due to intergovernmental responsibility for environmental policy.

Environmental Federalism

Vertical intergovernmental relationships in environmental policy may also complicate the relationship between partisan control and environmental outcomes. Contemporary environmental policy largely hinges on a delicate intergovernmental partnership between federal and state governments. The federal government establishes national environmental standards, regulations, and guidelines for programs as well as monitors for compliance. These national standards create a baseline for environmental protection affecting environmental outcomes across the country, but states are given significant discretion in designing regulations, pollution control strategies, and administrative procedures. Specifically, under most federal environmental programs, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with the responsibility for implementation, but is allowed to delegate that authority to states through a partial preemption system (i.e., primacy or primary implementation and enforcement authority). Through this system, EPA is also required to approve state implementation plans, monitor activities, and evaluate performance (Konisky and Woods 2016, 2018; Scheberle 2004, 2005). As a result, states can pursue political and administrative innovations to address unique socio-economic, political, and technical challenges within their jurisdictions, but these must comply with and be approved by EPA (Crotty 1987; Scicchitano and Hedge 1993; Woods 2006b; Woods and Potoski 2010). As such, if partisanship seeps into political or administrative directives and/or oversight of EPA (e.g., executive orders, political appointments, legislative oversight, budget allocation), it can trickle down to state agencies and complicate the effect of partisan control of state offices on the environment.

To this end, when federal–state relationships are positive, federal and state agencies cooperate to achieve mutually agreeable environmental policy goals. On the contrary, when this relationship is negative, programs are bogged down by conflict as federal and state agencies compete over how to deal with environmental problems (Scheberle 2004). In some cases, these conflicts lead to open warfare as state or federal elected officials try to force their agenda on the other party. Furthermore, the delegation of primacy provides states with a powerful bargaining chip in negotiating for program adjustments (Crotty 1987). While EPA has tools to manage state actions (e.g., establishing national standards and guidelines, monitoring and oversight authority, control over resources), past experience indicates that EPA has limited ability to run these programs independently and has never revoked primacy once granted (Crotty 1987; U.S. EPA 2019b; Woods 2006b; Woods 2008). In general, neither federal nor state leaders can expect to effectively achieve their policy goals (whether those are better for environmental outcomes or not) if there is intergovernmental conflict. In most cases, conflict leads to worse environmental outcomes as programs are overwhelmed with administrative challenges.

Given this, scholars have observed two competing phenomena in state environmental programs: a “race-to-the-top” and a “race-to-the-bottom” (Chang, Sigman, and Traub 2014; Konisky 2007; Konisky and Woods 2010; Koski 2007; Potoski 2001; Woods 2006a, 2006b). In terms of the former, some states are willing to exceed federal environmental standards to satisfy growing citizen demands for environmental quality. If state-elected officials are committed to environmental protection, they dedicate the necessary resources for programs, and administrators have the political support to pursue innovative implementation strategies to improve environmental conditions. In the latter, states use lax regulations and enforcement to attract industry in response to regulatory competition. If state-elected officials are not committed to the environment, they tend to follow implementation strategies that only meet minimum requirements to maximize funding from EPA and minimize regulatory barriers to economic development (Bacot and Dawes 1997; Lester 1995; Potoski 2002; Potoski and Woods 2000; Sapat 2004; Travis, Morris, and Morris 2004). In either case, decentralized decision making affords state leaders the opportunity to affect how effective state agencies are in implementing programs based on their environmental values.

In addition, as many state legislatures are now more productive than Congress, they have ample opportunity to shape environmental policies. This is particularly apparent with climate change policies in which a majority of states have challenged federal leadership by adopting greenhouse gas reduction targets over the last two decades, and more recently, have signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement after President Trump withdrew the United States (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions 2019; Konisky and Woods 2018; Rabe 2008, 2011). In sum, the institutional structures at play provide states with significant power to affect environmental policy based on the policy preferences of state-elected officials.

The intergovernmental responsibility for environmental policy makes it important to consider federal and state partisan control when evaluating the relationship between partisanship and environmental outcomes. It is possible these vertical relationships in environmental policy making and policy implementation block the influence of partisanship on outcomes. Alternatively, partisan alignment in offices across levels of government may result in a stronger effect. By examining partisan control of executive and legislative offices in the federal and state governments, we can evaluate these possibilities and provide a more complete test of the effect of partisan political control on environmental outcomes.

Data

Our dataset includes state-level observations for 50 states between 1993 and 2012. Although our initial dataset included 1,000 observations, missing data reduced our analytical sample to 702. This time period includes the most complete data on both environmental outputs, policy activities, and state-level political factors available. In addition, it captures a naturally modern period in both environmental politics and policy. Since the 1990 amendments to the CAA, there have been no major legislative changes to the Clean Air Act (CAA), Clean Water Act (CWA), or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), so we can expect institutional factors related to these programs to be stable over time. This time span also covers the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, which provides some variation in the partisanship of the presidency, as well as different combinations in the partisan control of Congress, gubernatorial offices, and state legislatures. The appendix provides variable descriptions.

Measuring Environmental Impacts

Measuring how partisanship affects the environment is a difficult task, as there is a complex array of federal, state, and local policies and administrative structures that are entangled in U.S. environmental governance. Although there is a long list of environmental outputs and outcomes tracked and reported by various public agencies (e.g., reported violations), many of these are subject to data validity and reliability challenges when making interstate comparisons. Consequently, there are few common measures of general environmental quality sophisticated enough to infer a causal relationship with partisan leadership. Previous scholars encountering a similar methodological challenge have used toxic chemical releases as a mechanism to assess the effectiveness of environmental policies. Their logic works like this: environmental quality is dependent on toxic chemical releases (i.e., pollution), so the purpose of most environmental policies is to curtail pollution to protect environmental quality; therefore, toxic chemical releases can be used as a measure of the impact of those policies (Bacot and Dawes 1997; Bowen and Wells 2002; Daley and Garand 2005; Fowler 2019; Konisky and Woods 2012; O’Toole et al. 1997; Sapat 2004).

For this study, we need a comprehensive measure of environmental quality capturing the influence of federal and state governments. Following the approach of previous research cited above, we use pollution concentration as a measure of environmental outcomes, calculated as the rate of annual state-level toxic chemical releases in pounds per square mile (U.S. EPA 2019c). ¹ The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program requires companies classified as mining, manufacturing, utilities, waste management, or wholesale trade that produce more than 25,000 pounds of toxic chemicals a year to report those chemical releases to EPA, who then compiles those reports into a national database. Primarily, these toxic releases involve pollutants directly regulated by the CAA, CWA, or RCRA and that pose a threat to human health and the environment (U.S. EPA 2019a). ² These three programs rely heavily on intergovernmental partnerships, so both federal and state politics play an important role in their effectiveness. Specifically, national standards and guidelines are established at the federal level; program implementation via regulations, procedures, and pollution control strategies occur at the state level; and program funding comes from both federal and state sources. As a result, the pollution concentration measure allows us to more fully evaluate how vertical and horizontal interbranch relationships may affect environmental outcomes than specific policy outcomes. The measure also provides comparable outcomes across states.

We assume toxic chemical releases are correlated with air, water, and land quality, so this serves as a proxy measure for key dimensions of general environmental quality (Bacot and Dawes 1997; Fowler 2019). That is, “ . . . to gauge how states fare in combating their environmental situations, having information on the amount of pollution being released within states’ borders is imperative” (Bacot and Dawes 1997, 361). Given variation in state size, toxic releases by itself may introduce biases into our analyses, so we use a rate with land area to make a more accurate comparison between states based on relative concentration.

In addition, we assume that Republicans have a general environmental policy agenda, but there is not enough consistency across the country in medium-specific policy stances to examine nuanced measures of environmental outcomes. Although Republicans can likely be grouped together based on a general bend away from pro-environmental policies, that grouping becomes more tenuous if we also assume that there is consistency in nuanced policy stances in regard to air, land, or water issues for elected officials operating in different ecological contexts. For instance, industrial cities in the Rust Belt grapple with a different set of environmental challenges than post-industrial urban areas in the West, so it is difficult to expect that Republican environmental agendas will be comparable on specific medium-based issues, such as air quality. Therefore, partisanship effects are likely only detectable when we aggregate policy outcomes to a broad enough level, so that nuances in Republican agendas across states become inconsequential. Although there may be some limitations, this provides us with an adequate mechanism to examine how partisanship affects the environment.

Partisan Control

To test the effects of partisanship, we created a series of dummy variables to compare Republican partisan control (1) with non-Republican partisan control (0) for president, Congress, governors, and state legislatures. We obtained data on partisan control of state offices and branches of governments from National Conference of State Legislatures (2019), and of Congress from the U.S. Senate (2019) and U.S. House of Representatives (2019), respectively. Notably, our measurement strategy assumes two things. First, as our research question is focused on whether Republican elected officials are bad for the environment, we compare Republicans with all non-Republicans, which includes both Democratic control of elected offices (and third-parties and independents in some cases) as well as divided partisan control of legislative branches. As such, our findings indicate how Republican control of these offices compare with all alternative partisan control scenarios. To do so, we construct a series of dummy variables. In Model 1, we use a simple comparison of Republicans with non-Republicans for each of the four offices. In Models 2 through 5, we conduct a more sophisticated comparisons by constructing a series of dummy variables that compare alternative combinations of partisan control across two offices (i.e., Republican–Republican; Republican–non-Republican; non-Republican–Republican) with a base category (i.e., non-Republican–non-Republican). Consequently, we are able to make inferences about how different partisan combinations of presidents, Congress, governors, and state legislatures compare as it relates to environmental outcomes.

Second, we assume that any toxic chemicals released during an elected official’s term can be attributed to how monitored industrial facilities respond to their leadership. While elected officials do not directly control toxic chemical releases and systemic institutional changes may take years to manifest, releases of toxic chemicals by industrial facilities, as well as the corresponding compliance monitoring and enforcement, is a continual process. Therefore, if partisanship has an impact, changes in toxic releases should be observable in the short term. However, we do recognize that in years of partisan change, there may be lingering effects from previous administrations or legislative agendas. Consequently, we also include two dummy variables to control for partisan changes at federal and state levels, where partisan stability (coded 0) is compared with partisan switch in either executive or legislative branch (1) or in both branches (2).

Co-Variates

We use 11 additional variables to control for socio-economic and institutional factors that also may affect toxic chemical releases. First, as toxic chemical releases are a by-product of economic activity, more economic activity from polluting industries typically results in more toxic releases (U.S. EPA 2019a). As such, we control for gross state product per capita produced from industries regulated under the CAA, CWA, and RCRA that are required to report toxic chemical releases under the TRI program. Using data from the BEA, we measure gross state product produced from the mining, manufacturing, utilities, waste management, or wholesale trade industries, in billions of real 2009 dollars (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis [U.S. BEA] 2019).

Second, we use three variables to control for political and ideological differences between states that are separate from partisanship: citizen ideology, Republican legislative ideology, and pro-environmental public opinion. To measure citizen and Republican legislator ideology, we use data from two commonly cited sources on the subject: Berry et al. (1998) revised citizen ideology series, and Shor and McCarty (2011). Berry et al. (1998) uses a series of interest group ratings of Congressional voting patterns to make inferences about ideological preferences of state populations. Shor and McCarty (2011) use roll call voting data to determine ideological patterns within state legislatures. Given that we are most concerned with Republicans, we focus on their ideologies, rather than ideology of the entire legislature. While both studies attempt to conceptualize related elements of state political landscapes, they are focused on different dimensions that help us to separate ideology from partisanship in our analyses. Public beliefs concerning the environment are an additional dimension here. Although state-level public opinion is difficult to measure, Kim and Urpelainen (2018) estimate state-level pro-environmental public opinion from 1973 to 2012 using a Multi-level Regression and Poststratification (MRP) technique that purports to produce the most accurate estimates available. With data from the General Social Survey (GSS), they measure pro-environmental public opinion with a survey item that is frequently used to capture public opinion on environmental concern (Daniels et al. 2012): “Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right amount on improving and protecting the environment?”

Finally, several scholars point to state capacity to manage environmental programs as a key dimension of success. Program expenditures tend to be the most common measures used, as more spending tends to equate to more resources dedicated to overcoming policy challenges (Bacot and Dawes 1997; Fowler 2016a; Lester 1995; Sapat 2004). Consequently, we use three variables to control for differences in financial resources at subnational levels: state total expenditures, state environmental expenditures, and local environmental expenditures. We include both levels of subnational government for environmental expenditures to capture any issues related to second-order devolution or fiscal federalism (i.e., if spending is shifted from state to local). We also include total state expenditures to control for differential spending levels in general. We use data from the U.S. Census (i.e., Statistical Abstract Series) and measure both as millions of real 2009 dollars per capita (U.S. Census 2019). ³ In addition, we account for variations in institutional features of federal–state relationships. While 44 states have primacy for the CAA, CWA, and RCRA, EPA manages at least one of these programs in 6 states, so the political and administrative processes are likely to differ (U.S. EPA 2019b). To control for these effects, we use a dummy variables to compare states with primacy for all three programs (1) with states without primacy for one program (0).

Analysis

To test these effects, we use a regression model with fixed effects for states and years. ⁴ Unlike random effects models, fixed effects models assume a set of unobserved variables within each state and year are associated with our dependent variable and control accordingly, so our analysis focuses on unexplained variance. The benefit of this assumption here is that it controls for a litany of factors that contribute to unexplained variance within states or over time that may otherwise bias our estimates (Bell and Jones 2015; Clark and Linzer 2015). Essentially, this allows us to examine how a set of political and economic variables common among states affect the variance left unexplained by factors unique to states or years. However, fixed effects models do not estimate effects for variables that are time invariant, rather they only control for those variables. Therefore, while institutional features, such as citizen legislatures or gubernatorial powers, and geographic factors, such as region, are controlled for in the model, we cannot estimate their relationship with our dependent variable. In addition, as we assume that standard errors within each state are correlated over time, we cluster standard errors at the state level (Primo, Jacobsmeier, and Milyo 2007). In general, this provides a rather rigorous test for identifying statistically significant relationships, so it is unlikely any findings suffer from Type 1 error (i.e., false positives).