When you think of a national park, my guess is that you think of beautiful mountains, tall trees, clear rivers, just about anything but a government document. But, if you want to understand how our national parks are managed and protected, you need to understand how they are governed and funded. Thus, when I started my research on the politics of national park management over a dozen years ago, I began using government documents extensively. The most useful documents to me were Congressional hearings, appropriations bills, and budget justifications. The following are a couple examples.
One argument I made in my books The Capacity for Wonder (Brookings 1994) and Preserving Public Lands for the Future (Georgetown 1998) was that Congressional micromanagement of park policies had increased over time. There are numerous ways to test that assertion, using both qualitative accounts and quantitative data. One simple illustration involves Congressional hearings. I hypothesized that the number of oversight hearings on national park policy would have increased significantly over time. Sure enough, using the CIS Index and the U.S. Serial Set Index to differentiate between routine and oversight hearings, I found that the latter increased steadily from 9 in the 84th Congress (1955-56) to 32 in the 101st (1989-90).
A second hypothesis concerned manipulation of park policies and spending by individual members of Congress. One might expect that individual politicians will use parks to their own electoral advantage or at least make sure that parks in their own jurisdictions are well taken care of. For instance, in an interview once, the Comptroller General of the National Park Service told me, "Parks in West Virginia always get enough money." This was an obvious reference to the power of West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd, the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sure enough, using the Department of the Interior Budget Justifications that itemizes spending on each park, I was able to show that, however measured, park units in West Virginia were indeed well funded relative to other park units.
In short, one can make all kinds of assertions and arguments about politics, including the politics of national park management. Government documents help you examine them.
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