The Knowledge-Shaping Process: Elite Mobilization and Environmental Policy

Abstract

Both using and contributing to power structure research, this article presents evidence that corporate and military elites form networks and mobilize resources to influence the development of environmental policy. This influence may be achieved when elites form and utilize knowledge-shaping processes, which involve four principle exercises of power. First, elites suppress information that may threaten their interests. Second, elites organize and fund institutions to produce and promote research that may be useful in efforts to secure their goals. Third, elites fund experts willing to attack and discredit potentially damaging research. Finally, they attempt to exert influence in knowledge administration, or in selecting what information counts as knowledge and what does not. Archival evidence is used to construct a case study of a knowledge-shaping process created to influence the national policy debate over ammonium perchlorate, the primary constituent of solid rocket fuel and a widespread water contaminant in the USA.