The paucity of studies in the comparative political economy literature that address environmental problems is somewhat surprising. First environmental protection is an important political issue. Since before the oil shocks of the 1970s, it has been one of the three most important social issues, often polling ahead of the traditional items of economic performance – growth, unemployment, and inflation. Second, environmental quality is a collective good that simultaneously affects human well-being and is intimately associated with economic production. The provision of collective economic “goods” (growth, low prices, full employment, etc.) is a common subject in comparative political economy, making the lack of attention to environmental outcomes all the more exceptional. Finally, the physical environment is a fundamental component of social risk that is a critical issue around which politics and economics interact.

Why does this oversight persist? There are several explanations. First, there has been a tendency to treat “environmental politics” (by both traditional political economists and by environmental policy specialists) as something that is fundamentally different from traditional political economy subject matter. The intellectual roots of environmental politics challenge much of the materialist and distributional consensus that is taken for granted in the study of contemporary political economy. For this reason, environmental policy has been consigned to a realm that is not very relevant to material welfare.

A second reason for the lack of attention to environmental issues comes from more serious and reasoned objections to the theories that placed environmental issues on the intellectual map.