The environment as a policy problemassume responsibility for creating the conditions under which business can
make profits. In anticipating the needs of business, a government will take
decisions that reflect commercial interests without businesses having to take
any observable action, not even to organise as a lobby. Lindblom does not
see business as uniformly privileged across all policy areas: he distinguishes
‘grand majority’ issues affecting significant economic interests over which
thepublic can exercise only limited influence, from secondary issues that
do not impinge directly on powerful business interests and where the policy
process is more competitive, or pluralistic (for example, land-use planning).
The contribution of neo-pluralism is to point to the privileged position of
business in many core economic policy sectors affecting the environment,
without claiming that business will always determine policy outcomes, or
keep all ‘undesirable’ issues off the agenda.
Nevertheless, from a more radical perspective, the two-dimensional model
still does not capture all aspects of the concept of power. Structuralist expla-
nations, notablyneo-Marxism,emphasise the significance of the underlying
economic structure in determining the distribution of political power in
favour of a ruling elite, or class. A key contribution made by structural-
ists is to identify an ideological dimension to power in which the role of
thestate is to support and promote the process of capitalist accumulation.
Offe ( 1974 )argues that within capitalist societies there are various mecha-
nisms, or exclusion rules, which identify those issues that merit attention
and filter out issues that threaten the values and rules of capitalist soci-
eties. Broad principles, such as the right to private property, provide the
legitimacy to screen out undesirable challenges to the status quo, including
some of those posed by environmentalism. Within individual policy sectors,
non-decision-making mechanisms keep certain issues off the agenda and
ideological mechanisms will define issues and problems in ways that pro-
duce a systematic bias in favour of capitalist interests. This ideological role
of the state reflects what Lukes ( 1974 ) calls ‘third-dimension’ power whereby
the‘verywants’ of individuals are shaped to accept the preferences of the
ruling elite, or class (even when they run counter to their own ‘objective’
interests), so that conflicts remain latent. Thus, returning to the Crenson
study, the selective perception within the local community in Gary that
jobs and economic development were the only real concerns – even though
air pollution might be damaging public health – may indicate that polit-
ical institutions had managed to mould citizen preferences to reflect the
interests of capital.^6
Structuralist and neo-pluralist theories of the state help explain how busi-
ness interests have retained a privileged position within the policy pro-
cess despite the increasingly large, vocal and professional environmental
lobby. Business can exercise the second and third dimensions of power to
reinforce the traditional paradigm and to resist more strategic and holis-
tic approaches to environmental policy. Of course, this structural power
is not deterministic. Sometimes environmental interests will prevail and