Choice 评论

On the face of it, a comparison between environmental policy making in the US and the European Union seems intriguing. The two entities have certainly behaved differently in the arena of international environmental policy and have different types of environmental regulations. It can be argued that the federal system of the US and the supranational character of the EU have some similarities that would make a comparison fruitful. The authors make a claim for the importance of comparative analysis but then fail to set up the study in a way that allows for such comparisons. Individual chapters look briefly at background issues relating to EU and US history, political decision making, and elements of international environmental law. Case studies address air quality, water quality, and waste management in the two entities. The latter chapters lay out only basic details of what policy exists on these issues and suggest briefly how policy arose to address these problems. There is no clear discussion of what differences or similarities exist between US and EU policy making on these (or other) issues, nor what might account for them. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. E. R. DeSombre; Colby College