| Traditionally, regulation of the environment has been predominantly under the purview of the public sector. Through watershed environmental laws of the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Toxic Substances Control Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)---with delegation of responsibilities to the states for enforcement---effectively regulated most single-media environmental problems such as industrial air pollution, point- source water pollution (Fiorino 2006; Kraft 2004). These statutes were primarily based on the "rules-and-deterrence" approach. However, the old paradigm has not evolved with the changing second-and third-generation "wicked" policy problems (such as climate change, biodiversity loss). This research argues that the failure of U.S. environmental regulations to adapt to the changing problems along with the political gridlock has constrained EPA's ability to effectively address 21st century problems. The study proposes that in order to overcome the managerial, legal, and political constraints, the EPA officials seek partnerships. The study offers a conceptual framework that categorizes these constraints into (i) administrative rationalism (ii) adversarial legalism (iii) limits on agency autonomy. By analyzing three EPA-led partnerships using a conceptual framework of constraints, the study answer the following questions (i) what motivates agency officials' to seek partnerships (ii) to what extent do partnerships meet the agency officials' expectations. Only the first two categories of constraints are studied empirically. The third category is offered as an area for future empirical research.;Three EPA-led partnerships that were analyzed for this study are: the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (2009-present), the PFOA Stewardship Program (2006-2015), and the Combined Heat and Power Partnership (2001-present). Results show that these partnerships were created to reduce certain sub-categories of the administrative rationalism and adversarial legalism constraint. The motivation to reduce regulatory inflexibility and barriers to policy innovation were important across all three partnerships. In all three cases the partnerships met the expectations of the EPA officials. Results support the proposition that EPA created these partnerships to overcome certain defects or supplement the Clean Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Clean Air Act. The partnerships however, are not prescribed as a silver bullet to solve all our contemporary environmental problems, but as one of the strategies in a regulator's toolbox. The results have implications for public policy scholars and practitioners interested in exploring partnerships as a way to reduce the administrative, legal, and political constraints of the U.S. regulatory system, and thereby enhance a federal agency's problem-solving capacity to address complex contemporary environmental policy problems. |
