Policy Change and Venue Choices: Field Burning in Idaho and Washington

Grass seed farmers have burned their fields in Idaho and Washington State for decades. Field burning, however, creates small particulate matter air pollution, thus engendering a growing public backlash by the 1990s that manifested itself in new clean air advocacy groups. The new groups' push for policy change eventually met with significant success in both cases. How did each set of advocates approach the challenge of policy change? More specifically, what kinds of policy venues did each group choose and why? This research uses the cases to explore and explain each clean air group's choices vis-a-vis hypotheses of venue choice. Three hypotheses are testedSchattschneider's (1960) expanded scope of conflict thesis, ACF's (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999) contention that groups strategically apply their resources in order to increase the likelihood of achieving their primary goal(s), and Pralle's (2003, 2010) thesis that internal group constraints deter groups from moving into new venues.