[sean_fred1]

What are the ways that government (executive branch, Congress, administrative agencies, the courts) and non-governmental entities (U.S. environmental organizations, the media, political parties, international governmental organizations, transnational advocacy networks, etc) interact with each other to shape environmental policy? In what ways do these diverse entities work well together? In what ways does the diversity of these entities contribute to difficulty during the political process?

[tomder55]

"Non-governmental entities" of almost any form are pressure groups to policy makers. To me, they are a legitimate part of the political process in that they pool the support and resources of citizens of similar interests to increase their influence on the policy makers. That is why I am generally opposed to efforts to curb their influence by means of "campaign finance reform" . The bottom line is that my voice is often better heard if I am part of a group of people speaking in one voice.The influence that any contributions I could make as part of a general public funding is not as great as it would be if my money was pooled with like minded people (often derided as "special interests " ).