Contentious Policies and Local Politics: Learning from Coal-Fired Facilities’ SO2 Emissions

Abstract

Building on the theory of social movements, we theorize that the influence of social movement organizations (SMOs) at the state level on their targets will depend on the broader regulatory context at the federal level. Specifically, we argue that contentious federal policies open up political opportunity structures and provide a favorable sociopolitical environment for SMOs at the state level. We use data on coal-fired facilities’ sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions to address the question of whether the influence of SMOs at the state level on facilities’ environmental performance was influenced by the contentiousness (or lack thereof) of federal-level policy mechanisms. The empirical results show that when the national-level Acid Rain Program (ARP) was regarded by stakeholders as a contentious regulation (2010–2011), the direct impact of SMOs and other related state-level sociopolitical contexts on facilities’ emissions increased. This is because when the federal policy was not contentious (2003–2009), coal-fired facilities, local government officials, key stakeholders, and even SMOs themselves attended to the implementation of the federal law. However, when the key policy mechanism was brought into question, SMOs stepped in to support and supplement the contentious policy at the local (state) level. Moreover, we contend that coal-fired facilities became more responsive to their local sociopolitical environment because the federal policy no longer fully secured their stable operation. From a political mediation perspective, our theory and results suggest that evaluating the direct influence of local social movements on organizations requires a dynamic approach that considers the broader institutional context at different societal levels.