Overview

Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics. Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

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9780807834893

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[Elkind's] clear-eyed and methodical explanation is necessary reading for scholars of the U.S. West and the environment, and for anyone who hopes to understand how well-organized business groups have shaped American political culture and the American landscape. <br>- American Historical Review

Combining urban, political, and environmental history, Sarah Elkind delivers an assiduously researched analysis of how political policies are formed in the United States. This is a compelling, fascinating, and innovative book. --Douglas Sackman, University of Puget Sound, and editor of A Companion to American Environmental History <br>

Author Information

Sarah S. Elkind is associate professor of history and director of environmental studies at San Diego State University. She is author of Bay Cities and Water Politics: The Battle for Resources in Boston and Oakland, which won the Abel Wolman Prize from the Public Works Historical Society.

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