UnProfessor Jon Agnone

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Un-Professor Jon Agnone Department of Sociology
U.S. Environmental Movement Public Policy
Sociology 496 Honors Senior Seminar Fall 2007
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PERSONAL BACKGROUND

• BA Soc/Psych, The Ohio State University
• Undergraduate RA BA honors thesis
• 1 year as full-time RA for NLSY79/BLS
• MA thesis on environmental policy
• Dissertation on unions wealth

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ORIGIN OF RESEARCH PROJECT

• RA in psychology, then sociology
• Data collection from NYT Index
• BA honors thesis
• Part-time RA given access to environmental data
  for MA/PhD
• Data driven vs. problem driven

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ORIGIN OF RESEARCH PROJECT

• Social movement outcomes
• Giugni (1998) Do Social Movements Matter?
• Burstein (1985) Discrimination, Jobs and
  Politics.
• Political science/policy change literature
• back to data
• Policy data?
• Public opinion data?

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SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT

• Social movement theory
• Evolution of field, from emergence and
  development to outcomes
• Public policy enactment
• Shifts in public policy?
• Political science vs. political sociology/social
  movements

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CENTRAL HYPOTHESES OR QUESTIONS

• What explains shifts in public policy?
• Protest (Piven Cloward)
• Public opinion (Burstein)
• Relationship b/w protest public opinion
• Public opinion more important than protest
• Amplification mechanism

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Units of Analysis
• Time-series analysis from 1960-1998 (obs year)
• Type of Evidence Used
• Dependent Variable
• Environmental laws passed
• Key Independent Variables
• Protest Public opinion
• Covariates
• Advocacy Elections Dem. Power Media attention
  Lawst-1
• Analytical Method
• Poisson Regression (count data)
• Decompose effects into likelihoods of an event

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RESULTS/FINDINGS
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RESULTS/FINDINGS
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RESULTS/FINDINGS

• Protest Public Opinion both matter
• Protest has direct effect, increases likelihood
  of DV by 1.2
• Protest has effect, net of public opinion
• Main contribution to literature
• Protest amplifies effect of public opinion on
  policy, i.e., raises salience of issue to policy
  makers

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GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

• Movements can impact policy
• Directly and in conjunction with public opinion
• Public policy literature
• Political Science vs. Sociology
• How generalizable
• To other time-periods?
• To other movement/policy realms?

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CHALLENGES

• Public Opinion Data
• Unavailable as trend measure
• Had to create index (Stimsons Policy Mood)
• Merging disparate, but overlapping, research
  fields
• Environment, social movements, public policy

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SURPRISES

• Substantive interest of project
• Newsworthy
• Relevance of environmental policy issues
• The Daily, The Nation, New Scientist, Grist,
  others
• Reached eyes and ears of major environmental
  leaders

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FUTURE DIRECTIONS

• Co-authored paper
• Environmental public policy across policy stages
• Testing theoretical framework on different cases
• Can you say BA thesis?