“Everybody Else Seems to be Able to Get Help”: Rural Regulation, Access Loss, and Antigovernment Sentiment

This Essay draws upon two decades of the author’s research on rural United States communities to explicate ways in which the regulatory state has intervened in rural areas and economies, often with the claim of protecting land, natural resources, and/or wildlife. The outcomes are frequently disastrous for the human populations of those communities and generally are not planned for or mitigated by policy. The Essay argues that rural distrust of and aversion to government oversight is not caused primarily by ideological or cultural stances, but rather is an outcome of experiences of abandonment by the agencies that are meant to protect United States land and communities from harm. Drawing primarily from two rural Northwestern case studies, the Essay documents the impacts of changing regulations in rural communities on those populations and explores their reactions. Regulatory attacks are contrasted with state failures to protect and provide for the same citizens. The Essay argues that antigovernment sentiment is a rational reaction from people who have experienced the persistent abandonment and exploitation of their labor, their communities, their economies, and their land.