The neglect that recent political science has shown toward the concept of the State has drastically
reduced the efiicacy of analyses of environmental interest group politics. This thesis is an
attempt to introduce a revamped concept of the State into such an analysis. The State is defined
as both administrative and ideological. Through drawing out the logic of the environmentalist
position, it can be shown how environmentalism challenges both these aspects of the modem State.
It will then be shown how the State plays a decisive role in setting the parameters in which interest
group activity operates, and how those parameters dictate that only groups which deny the logic
of their own environmental ideological position gain access to existing power structures. The State,
through the marketization, scientization, and technologization of the issues, has effectively defined
the language of debate. This language is not the natural language of environmentalism, just as the
definitions of the arena, and the norms of legitimacy and behavior sanctioned by the State are unsuited
to the claims of environmentalism. By showing that the State has both the capacity and the
incentive to intervene, the original premise of bringing the State back in to this analysis of environmental
interest group politics in the United States is justified.
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