This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant--supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF--examines the governance of automobile technology in the United States. Throughout the 20th century, the automobile reigned as the great American machine, a object bound to every level of American life and culture, from economic cycles to passions of teen dating, from travails of labor to travels of soccer moms. Yet, automobiles brought with them multiple dimensions of risk: crashes mangled bodies, tailpipes spewed toxic exhausts, and engines guzzled increasingly scarce fuel resources. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States federal government created institutions--primarily the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency--to regulate the automobile industry around three concerns, crash safety, fuel efficiency, and control of emissions. This dissertation research examines the growth of government institutions (i.e., the state) that regulate automobile from the 1960s through the 1980s when the state came under fire from new political forces and governmental bureaucracies experienced large cutbacks. While previous studies of regulation have focused either on biographies of regulatory visionaries (a.k.a. policy entrepreneurs) or on legislative histories, this dissertation research examines how the state built bureaucratic organizations and administrative capacity to regulate and enact change in industry through performance standards. Only by examining these micro-practices of governmental power, this project argues, can we understand how regulatory regimes have truly influenced their intended objects. This dissertation research examines how these institutions developed, learned, and evolved, and how they shaped technological change in the automobile industry.
The project is based on traditional historical methods, including archival research; government document, newspaper, and periodical research; and oral histories. The project is significant not only because it fills historiographical gaps, but also because a deep understanding of regulation and regulatory institutions is important for potentially shaping other technologies (e.g., those emitting greenhouse gases) and for guiding the domestic auto industry beyond its current tribulations.
