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Beyond Designed Capture

A Reanalysis of the Beginnings of Public Range Management, 1928–38

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Michael M. Welsh
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Extract

There is a conventional wisdom about the origin of public range management in the American west that draws most of its evidence logically, but nevertheless circumstantially, from decades of subsequent policy. It is shared by advocates across the political spectrum, from conservative elected officials and ranchers to radical environmentalists. That conventional wisdom distracts the many individuals who have attempted to understand range policy, and it hampers recent attempts at range policy reform. Narrowly, the conventional wisdom concludes that the institutionalized management privilege of cattle ranchersover all other users—the capture of range management—was according to the design of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. In so concluding, the conventional wisdom contributes to the more general idea that forces are at work to make the colonization of a policy area by a particular interest the inevitable result of politics in a liberal democracy.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 2002 , pp. 347 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2002 

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