Debunking myths about oil: A case study of oil subsidies

Jung Taek Han and Seo Yeon Kim
Additional contact information
Jung Taek Han: Yonsei University, Republic of Korea
Seo Yeon Kim: Yonsei University, Republic of Korea

International Area Studies Review, 2019, vol. 22, issue 2, 186-200

Abstract: Despite increasing demands for the reform of oil subsidies, the United States government fails to enact substantial reform policies on the issue. The paper visits the biggest unresolved cleavage in the environmental policy literature where there have been no attempts to quantitatively assess the influence of lobbying and mass participation on the policy-making process. It thus attempts to quantify and examine various factors behind legislators’ votes, and the results are hard to square with a pure lobbying model. While the role of lobbying is certainly not ruled out of the explanatory model per se, this paper observed that congressional preferences may instead also be driven by the voter perception towards environmental regulation in each state. The thrust of the argument is that lobbying, while being a decisive factor, may not be the only one influencing legislators’ decisions for the oil subsidy reform bills. This study hypothesizes that the exchange model theory might not fully provide an explanation of why oil subsidies continuously fall through. It suggests that oil politics may instead follow the neo-pluralist model: While lobbying is an important factor in voting results, legislators are mindful of voters’ perspectives in spite of the fact that they are unorganized—and that they might in fact be even more powerful determinants than the lobby variable.

Keywords: Environmental policy; lobbying; exchange theory; neo-pluralist theory; legislative behaviors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2233865919838435 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:intare:v:22:y:2019:i:2:p:186-200

DOI: 10.1177/2233865919838435

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Area Studies Review from Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().