THE MAKING OF THE 1967 MONTANA CLEAN-AIR-ACT: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION

This dissertation is a case study of the social factors and forces instrumental in the making of the 1967 Montana Clean Air Act. In this particular instance, the clean air forces were able to win a symbolic victory over the forces of industrial capital. The social history of the legislative struggle for clean air in Montana has implications for recent attempts to develop theories of state law-making. Pluralist, elitist and neo-marxist theories of the state were evaluated on the basis of social history of the 1967 Montana Clean Air Act, and were found to be inadequate. In analyzing the struggle for clean air legislation the definitional process approach (or the symbolic approach to law-making) was taken. This approach holds that it is not the objective condition of air pollution that counts; instead it is how various social actors interprete the objective condition that is socially significant. Using this approach the struggle for clean air was examined in light of how various social actors both for and against clean air defined the situation and attempted to have their ways of seeing legitimated in law. The forces of industrial capital tended to define the situation as a scientific and technological problem, if it was one at all, requiring no legislation and if legislation, then weak legislation. The clean air forces defined the situation as a problem of health, agricultural economics and aesthetics, requiring a strong air pollution control law. It was the clean air forces which were successful in having their views legitimated in law.