The Inner Life of Policy Subsystems: Responding to Conflict and Spillover Effects.

How does a policy subsystem adapt to conflicting policies? What happens when the negative externalities of distributive policies are in conflict with regulatory policies? Will such conflict trigger subsystem change? These questions are important to our understanding of the "inner life" of policy subsystems. This paper examines the structural changes that occur in a policy subsystem when the negative externalities of distributive policies conflict with the goals of regulatory policies. Set against the backdrop of the Mississippi River watershed, the paper examines the region's navigation and flood policies; the negative externalities of wetland loss in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico's seasonal "dead zone"; and the regulatory policies that address these externalities. This study is longitudinal in nature with baseline data spanning six decades. Data is complied from congressional hearings, Environmental Impact Statements, and federal court records. I propose that the conflict between distributive policies and regulatory policies leads to an expansion of the policy subsystem, causing the system to mimic an issue network as opposed to the iron triangle model that characterizes the politics of distributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]