The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) are federal systems in which the responsibility for environmental policy-making is divided or shared between the central government and the (member) states. The attribution of decision-making power has important policy implications. This chapter compares the role of central and local authorities in the US and the EU in formulating environmental regulations in three areas: automotive emissions for health-related (criteria) pollutants, packaging waste, and global climate change. Automotive emissions are relatively centralised in both political systems. In the cases of packaging waste and global climate change, regulatory policy-making is shared in the EU, but is primarily the responsibility of local governments in the US. Thus, in some important areas, regulatory policy-making is more centralised in the EU. The most important role local governments play in the regulatory process is to help diffuse stringent local standards through more centralised regulations, a dynamic which has recently become more important in the EU than in the US.
Leaders in all sectors, from business to sports to education, are increasingly wading into controversial political and social issues. Based on interviews with leaders who have made activism part of their core activities, we found that they feel compelled to address hot-button issues and are guided by their own values as well as the history and culture of their organization. They also complement their public activities with a “ground game” executed out of the limelight.
