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It is much easier to understand why environmental laws are needed than it is to comprehend how they came to be adopted.Whether described as a "tragedy of the commons,"1 a problem of externalities, or a free-rider problem, the reasons why the marketplace alone will not provide sufficient clean air, clean water, and other public goods are well understood.2 But while a powerful case can be made that collective action to protect the environment is in society's best interests, it is hard to understand how market failures can be redressed through a political process that itself is prone to problems of free-riders and factional influence.3 Political obstacles to collective action on behalf of diffuse public interests were identified by Mancur Olson in his classic 1965 work The Logic of Collective Action.4 Olson's work questions the political feasibility of regulatory legislation that provides diffuse environmental benefits to the general public while imposing concentrated costs on well-organized industry groups.Yet shortly after Olson's landmark work was published, a veritable avalanche of public interest legislation was enacted by Congress.These laws erected a comprehensive regulatory infrastructure to protect the environment that seemingly contradicts the predictions of Olson's theory.
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