Comparing national efforts to preserve public lands, William R.
Lowry investigates how effectively and under what conditions
governments can provide goods for future generations.
Providing intergenerational goods, ranging from balanced budgets
to space programs and natural environments, is particularly
challenging because most political incentives reward short-term
behavior. Lowry examines the effect of institutional structure on
the public delivery of these goods. He offers a theoretical
framework accounting for both the necessary conditions -- public
demand, political stability, and official commitment to long-term
delivery -- and constraining factors -- the tensions between public
agencies and politicians as well as between different levels of
government -- that determine the ability of a nation to achieve
long-term goals.
In support of this argument, Lowry evaluates data on park
systems from more than one hundred countries and provides in-depth
case studies of four -- he United States, Australia, Canada, and
Costa Rica -- to show how and why the delivery of intergenerational
goods can vary. For each of the cases, he reviews background
information, discusses constraints on agency behavior, and assesses
expansion of the park systems and restoration of natural conditions
at specific locations.
This extensive comparative analysis of the preservation of
public lands offers new insights into the capability of nations to
pursue long-term goals.
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