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Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and the Policy Process: A Study of the Post–1945 California Sardine Depletion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Arthur F. McEvoy  and
Harry N. Scheiber
Arthur F. McEvoy
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of History and Research Faculty, Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60201
Harry N. Scheiber
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of History and Research Faculty, Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60201
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Abstract

The California Marine Research Committee was established by the state legislature in 1947 in response to the catastrophic failure of the Pacific Coast sardine fishery. Scientists, state and federal resource-managment officials, and industry leaders put aside long–standing differences of viewpoint to launch a uniquely comprehensive, multidisciplinary research effort. This paper, based on newly opened archival materials, analyzes the founding and early work of the agency. How a stalemate occurred that delayed a consensus on policy recommendations and had the practical effect of continuing virtually unregulated sardine fishing is explained. The article illustrates the institutional development of post–war “Big Science” as a major actor in the policy process and analyzes the mobilization of public agencies to cope with complex environmental issues in resource–extractive industries.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 393 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

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19 Notes ofHubbs, Carl, June 9–11, 1948 Sardine Conference, Hubbs Papers.Google Scholar

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23 Chapman wrote that the industry was “uniformly consistent in refusing to look ahead to the future of their supply of raw material,” supporting research efforts only when faced with disaster. (“High Seas,” supra, note 21).Google Scholar

24 Chapman to Vern Knudsen, October 22, 1947, Chapman Papers.Google Scholar

25 An extensive public airing of fisheries scientists' differences occurred in California in 1948 as a debate took place on a constitutional ammendment (defeated) to limit purse-seine fishing.Google Scholar

26 Chapman to Phister, September 19, 1947; Phister to Chapman, March 25, 1947; Chapman, “High Seas,” all in Chapman Papers.Google Scholar

27 This and other constitutional referenda on California resource issues will be treated in a forthcoming monograph by Scheiber and Schweinberger.Google Scholar

28 Since the research program would be financed by a tax on fish landings, the industry representatives were (correctly) confident that the legislature would support the recommendations of the coalition proposing research.Google Scholar

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