| Abstrakt: |
Why do state governments facing the same challenge - one involving innovative economic production activities that simultaneously carry great promises of benefits to local economies and substantial environmental and health risks - differ in their regulatory responses to such a challenge? Applying sociological field theory, I generate competing hypotheses for whether and how stringently states regulate a highly disruptive economic activity. In doing so, I contribute to sociological understandings of law, economics, and politics. Using the case of the recent boom in oil and gas production in the United States, which has been brought about by what is commonly referred to as "fracking," I seek to understand the social and economic conditions under which states intervene in the economic activity to protect citizens from perceived risk. Because the federal government has left fracking regulation primarily to the states, fracking provides an ideal case in which to study regulatory variation. Having constructed a first-of-its-kind dataset covering fracking regulations for the 48 contiguous states from 2008 to 2013, I analyze the effects of institutional influences internal to a state's policy field as well as external influences from other states on whether and how stringently a state regulates fracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
