The Green Agenda in American Politics: New Strategies for the Twenty-First Century.

By Robert J. Duffy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 288p. $35.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

The shifting typography of American politics over the last couple of decades of the twentieth century makes a discussion of interest group efforts to influence elections and policy particularly relevant. Such trends as burgeoning new communications technologies, the changing character of political parties, and the collapse of campaign finance rules have transformed the role and potential impact of interest groups. In this book, Robert Duffy examines environmental interest groups' recent efforts to set the agenda in environmental policy and elections and concludes with his expectations about their implications for the future. As he points out, while these groups' attempts at influencing the electoral and policy agendas are not new, the nature and extent of their efforts, and the character of the political system in which they operate, most definitely are.

Because of the wide range of activities encompassed in agenda setting, Duffy's mission could easily have degenerated into a detailed catalog of tactics and techniques. The book, however, weaves the intricate and complex changes in environmental groups' work into a fascinating exploration of the environmental movements' constituent groups' goals, strategies, and opportunities, fulfilled and not. The author combines a thorough knowledge of groups' activities with a clear grasp of American politics and political science. His writing is particularly clear: straightforward and elegant with minimal reliance on “jargon.” The result is a book of great value for scholars and students. Scholars specializing in interest groups and those concerned with environmental policy will find rich descriptions of the dynamics of environmental interest group campaigns. Students in upper-level and graduate classes in environmental policy and interest groups will find a text infused with the genuine excitement of political struggle that demonstrates the lessons of current political science. The book's accessibility, along with Duffy's ability to situate environmental group activism in the context of broader political and institutional developments, also make it suitable as a supplementary text for introductory courses in American government.

Duffy's discussion in Chapter 2 of recent developments in interest group politics relies on the work of Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, William Browne, and others in arguing that we have entered a fundamentally new era in interest group politics, one that requires interest groups to adapt by becoming more active politically. Chapter 3, which offers a brief but useful overview of lobbying strategies and electoral activity by environmental groups from the 1950s through the early 1990s, sets the stage for Duffy's primary focus—describing and explaining what is new in contemporary environmental advocacy.

Chapter 4 documents new developments in environmental group lobbying. Duffy makes a persuasive case that advocacy by environmental organizations has become more extensive and sophisticated in recent years. Most interesting here is his argument that better use of technology and more attention to communication strategies are the result of a concerted effort by foundations and other donors to build the capacity of environmental groups—to make them, in short, more effective participants in policymaking. Here, Duffy comes down squarely on the side of those who argue that national groups continue to play an essential role in contemporary environmental activism.

Chapters 5 and 6 document the emergence of new and more aggressive forms of electioneering by environmental groups in congressional and subnational elections, respectively. Most notably, Duffy documents a dramatic increase in the amount of political money raised and spent by environmental groups, as well as a shift away from direct contributions to independent expenditure, issue advocacy, and voter education campaigns. Rather than wait for congressional candidates to raise environmental issues on their own, some groups waged their own paid media campaigns to frame the issues for debate, seeking to force candidates to address environmental issues. In so doing, environmental groups hoped to raise the prominence of environmental issues, to reenergize their grass roots, and thus to elect more public officials who would support their policy goals. Duffy challenges the conventional view that environmental groups are electoral “paper tigers,” arguing that they “can and have played an important and in some cases decisive role in congressional elections, as well as in state and local races” (p. 10).

The greatest strength of the book is the author's adept use of case studies. Rather than using cases simply as examples of his points, Duffy allows the lessons of current agenda setting to grow out of the explication of his cases. In this way, he is able to communicate the intricacies and interrelatedness of political struggles. The case with which he opens his introductory chapter is illustrative of this approach. He recounts the story of the Heritage Forest Campaign, which successfully lobbied the Forest Service to adopt a controversial rule protecting nearly 60 million acres of roadless forests. As Duffy notes, the campaign was well funded by a number of foundations and included the collaboration of more than 500 environmental groups over a number of years. The campaign employed a variety of techniques: public opinion polling, traditional and on-line organizing, and everything from door-to-door canvassing and direct mail to Internet contacts and websites. From this case and others, one is brought to an understanding of the myriad political factors at work: The essential lifeline provided by patrons, the importance of group alliances, the intricacies of grassroots mobilization, the variety of technological tools employed (from traditional door-to-door campaigns to e-mail), the role of issue visibility and with it media attention, and the unpredictability of policy outcomes are but a few.

Although there are several recent books that focus on environmental groups, I am unaware of any that focus exclusively on environmental groups and their electoral and lobbying strategies. In general, recent books on environmental groups have a different focus, with some examining the role of such groups in particular environmental policy disputes (Gary C. Bryner's Blue Skies, Green Politics, 2d ed. [1996]), and others examining the financial/organizational challenges facing the large membership groups (Mark Dowie, Losing Ground [1995], Anna Bramwell, The Fading of the Greens: The Decline of Environmental Politics in the West [1994], and Ronald G. Shaiko, Voices and Echoes for the Environment: Public Interest Representation in the 1990s and Beyond [1999]). Although Deborah Lynn Guber's The Grassroots of a Green Revolution: Polling America on the Environment (2003) seeks to explain why environmental issues rarely influence electoral outcomes, the political strategies of environmental groups are not her central concern.

Like his Nuclear Politics in America: A History and Theory of Government Regulation (1997), which received the Caldwell Award for best book on environmental politics and policy, Duffy's The Green Agenda in American Politics deserves a wide readership.