Public Service and Academic Career
Wengert was employed in several positions by the Tennessee Valley Authority (1941–48); was a member of the Program Staff in the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior (1951–52); was a Research Associate for Resources for the Future (1956), and served as Deputy Director of the National Recreation Survey of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (1959–60), which provided the basis for Interior Secretary Stuart Udall’s successful program for quadrupling the acreage of the National Park System in eight years, and for enactment of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, providing money for recreational land acquisition. He also served as a member of the Policy Analysis Staff in the Office of the Chief, U.S. Forest Service (1978–79).
Wengert began his academic career as a member of the faculty of City College of New York (1948–51); was Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Social Science Department at North Dakota State University (1952–56); Professor of Public Administration at the University of Maryland, College Park (1956–59); Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Wayne State University (1960–68); Visiting Professor of Public Administration at Pennsylvania State University (1968–69), and Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University (1969–87), where with Henry P. Caulfield, Jr. and Phillip O. Foss he helped establish its doctoral program in Environmental Politics and Policy. During this period he also served as Visiting Research Professor at the U.S. Army Engineering Institute for Water Resources (1969–70), was a Summer Fellow at Fonds für Umweltstudien, in Bonn, Germany (1973), and lectured at the University of Sarajevo in 1978.
Wengert's scholarship explored the politics of natural resources and environmental policy formation and administration, with emphases in national energy policy, urban water planning and management, land use planning and controls, national forest management, and citizen participation in administrative processes. At a time when environmental issues were nascent in the public consciousness, Wengert was one of the few political scientists applying their skills in this area. He achieved some early renown when his book Natural Resources and the Political Struggle which pioneered the revival of political economy in the United States found some popularity among scholars in 1955, but he is probably best known as coeditor and contributor of a timely anthology about the energy crisis that appeared coincidentally during the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, published by the prestigious American Academy of Political and Social Science. Later in his career he advanced a seminal theory of the "politics of getting" in which he asserted: "American politicians will get as much as they can for their constituents, with only casual attention to the merits of the case and to the extent that they are not likely to be held directly accountable for costs". This theory was accepted by others and extended into the study of international relations and comparative politics. Unafraid of courting controversy, he also published a research monograph that argued that the U.S. Forest Service had substituted its professional values for the legal requirements of their Organic Act of 1897 by allowing timber to be clearcut on the national forests for almost 80 years before they were authorized to do so by the National Forest Management Act of 1976. Overall, he authored more than fifty monographs and studies on the political economy and public administration of environmental resources.
Recognition of his scholarship is evident in Wengert’s invitation to testify as an expert witness on “Public Participation in Scientific and Technical Decision Making” during hearings before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology in 1977, an uncommon honor for a university professor. On that occasion, his 1976 Natural Resources Journal article "Citizen Participation: Practice in Search of a Theory" was reprinted in the hearings record in its entirety, something that is also unusual for an academic.
Wengert served for many years on the Board of Directors of the Forest History Society (1979–1987) and as Associate Editor of the Water Resources Bulletin (1971–1987; now Journal of the American Water Resources Association).
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