The Science of Bureaucracy: Risk-Decision Making and the US Environmental Protection Agency’.

Summary 1st lines: Within the literature devoted to the analysis of the relations between political powers, administration and private interests, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has long constituted an important case study. For the reader familiar with this vast field of research, the mention of this agency in charge of environmental protection in the United States (intervening in numerous domains ranging from air pollution to the use of pesticides, including the regulation of toxic substances or drinking water) will undoubtedly recall the debate that opposed Dan Cook and Brian Wood in the American Political Science Review at the end of the 1980s : While the former saw the EPA as the prototype of a bureaucracy that was constantly buffeted between the influence of the presidency and that of Congress, the latter argued on the contrary that the agency's "resources" and the "zeal" of its members gave it an autonomy that allowed it to ignore, or even to thwart, the coalitions of interests defended by political actors.