mpeting industries operate. Meanwhile, economics and the environment seem to be perennial competitors for social politics. This is emphasized by Greider (1988), who notes that at the federal level, little consensus has been found between legislators with a health-and-safety agenda and those with an agenda to protect, say, auto-manufacturing or coal-producing economics in their regions. As he puts it, "The dilution of clean-air enforcement has become its own form of pork barrel for politicians on Capitol Hill" (p. 180).
The environment is an increasingly global issue. Writing in 1986, the International Institute for Environment and Development laments the grave lack of international consensus on the human impact on the environment. Opinion on the question of whether priority should be given to environmental concerns even if this means restricting economic growth tends to divide along economic lines between industrialized and Third World countries, although the report cites six international conferences during the 1980s that pointed toward the interdependence of environment, economy, and nationhoods. As the report notes, "most developing countries are by and large still in the 'react and cure' phase, while the developed nations are beginning to address a new agenda of 'anticipate and prevent,' though the earlier agenda is far from complete. In numerous developing countries, effective 'react and cure' remains a distant goal" (p. 192). Meaningful efforts to reach consensus have come about as a result of the UN's drastically under-funded but occasionally effective Environment Program, the World Bank's policy of tying international loans to environmentally sound projects, and the less efficient bilateral (i.e,. developed to developing nation) assistance programs that tie environmental conditions to the provision of foreign aid. The latter arena, in which environmental policy can be tied to economic development, is where the Insti...