National styles of regulation: environmental policy in Great Britain and the United States.

National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States. By David Vogel. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. 325 pp. Notes and index. Paper, $12.95.

David Vogel's book comparing environmental policy in Great Britain and the United States is one of a number of such studies which argue that, despite different national styles of regulation in the western world, the result for environmental policy is quite similar. The more closed governing systems of western Europe produce results substantially no different from the more open ones of the United States.

While several of these books focus on a single problem, such as air pollution, occupational health, or carcinogens, Vogel's is distinctive in that it attempts a judgment about a broad cross-section of environmental policies that includes land use planning as well as pollution control.

In the United States, so the argument goes, more open government permits the public to be involved deeply in …