Corporate Power and the Environment: The Political Economy of U.S. Environmental Policy. By George A. Gonzalez. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 160p. $60.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Extract

George A. Gonzalez has authored a lucid and well-written book with a sharp thesis. He challenges the conventional claim that environmental policy is “an oasis of democracy” by developing a series of case studies to demonstrate that “members of the nation's economic elite—corporate decision-makers and other individuals of substantial wealth—are the dominant influences in the formation and development of U.S. environmental policies” (p. ix). In constructing his theoretical argument, Gonzalez combines G. William Domhoff's method of power structure analysis with James Weinstein's and others' historical analysis of corporate liberalism.