Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2012, 5, 357–375 doi:10.1093/cjres/rss002 Advance Access publication 27 March 2012 © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Corporate power and US economic and environmental policy, 1978–2008 Harland Prechel Department of Sociology, 4351 TAMU, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843- 4351, USA, hprechel@tamu.edu Received on May 31, 2011; accepted on February 9, 2012 The analysis here critically evaluates the ‘new corporate environmentalism’ and elaborates a relational theory of the state to explain policy formation in the US electrical energy industry. There are several findings. Firstly, corporations mobilize politically to advance their economic agendas and weaken environmental policy. Secondly, after state structures are created to enforce public policy, they provide the socio-political legitimacy for corporations to further advance their economic interests. Thirdly, in contrast to neoliberal claims, corporate– state relations during the era of re-regulation resulted in higher energy cost for consumers in several regions. Keywords: environmental and economic policy, political capitalism, corporate–state relations, US electrical energy industry JEL Classifications: L22, L43, L94, Q4 Introduction The ‘new corporate environmentalism’ that elabo- rates the role of business in achieving both economic growth and environmental sustainability has become a central component of how corporations present themselves to the public. However, critics maintain that corporations employ this rhetoric to conceal their environmental pollution and preserve organizational viability (Beamish, 2000, 2002; Crane et al., 2008). Others suggest that greater attention should be given to organizations because they are among the most intensive environmental polluters (Perrow, 1997) and there has been an exponential increase in the use of environmental pollutants in industrial produc- tion in recent years (Beck, 1992). Research that focuses on organizations also suggests that there is a need to move beyond taken for granted assump- tions in existing organizational theories, which limit inquiry into environmental issues (Jermier, 2008). Still others suggest that understanding environmental degradation requires an examination of the ‘asymme- try of hierarch or power between polluters and polluted’ (Held et al., 1999, 381) and greater atten- tion should be given to the formation of environmen- tal policy (Freudenburg et al., 2009). Critics also maintain that understanding the relationship between the political behaviour of corporations and environ- mental pollution is hampered by theories that assume that environmental policies are the outcome of an autonomous state (Kraft and Vig, 2000). To address the political dimension of environ- mental pollution, the analysis here examines the exercise of corporate power in the policy formation at Texas A&M College Station on November 7, 2012 http://cjres.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from