Assessing Consensus: The Promise and Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking

Coglianese, Cary

doi:10.2307/1372989

Cited by 282 publications

(169 citation statements)

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“…Second approximation (30): Ansell (2003), Beierle and Konisky (2001), Coglianese (1997), Conley and Moote (2003), Ebrahim (2004), Ekoko (2000), Elliot et al (1999),…”

Section: Appendixmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

Ansell

Gash

2007

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

4,845

4,470

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Over the past few decades, a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. Collaborative governance, as it has come to be known, brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance. After reviewing 137 cases of collaborative governance across a range of policy sectors, we identify critical variables that will influence whether or not this mode of governance will produce successful collaboration. These variables include the prior history of conflict or cooperation, the incentives for stakeholders to participate, power and resources imbalances, leadership, and institutional design. We also identify a series of factors that are crucial within the collaborative process itself. These factors include face-to-face dialogue, trust building, and the development of commitment and shared understanding. We found that a virtuous cycle of collaboration tends to develop when collaborative forums focus on ''small wins'' that deepen trust, commitment, and shared understanding. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our contingency model for practitioners and for future research on collaborative governance.Over the last two decades, a new strategy of governing called ''collaborative governance'' has developed. This mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a general model of collaborative governance. The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach to collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an Early versions of this article were presented at the Conference on Democratic Network Governance, Copenhagen, the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizations at the University of California, Irvine, and the Berkeley graduate seminar Perspectives on Governance. We thank the participants of these events for their useful suggestions and Martha Feldman, in particular, for her encouragement. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and useful comments.

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“…Second approximation (30): Ansell (2003), Beierle and Konisky (2001), Coglianese (1997), Conley and Moote (2003), Ebrahim (2004), Ekoko (2000), Elliot et al (1999),…”

Section: Appendixmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

Ansell

Gash

2007

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

4,845

4,470

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“…In this instance, participation is considered valuable because it enables the agencies to achieve their own goals more efficiently (Fiorino 1990, 228). These justifications, which abound in the DOE's own literature, stress the importance of winning over the local population, of making agency decisions appear legitimate to those affected by them, and of preempting rancorous opposition and costly lawsuits which prevent government agencies from implementing their programs successfully (Coglianese 1997;Hanford Public Involvement Plan 2012).…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hanford Advisory Board: participatory democracy, technology, and representation

Sager

Zakaras

2014

J Environ Stud Sci

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The Hanford Advisory Board (HAB) is a broadly representative, deliberative body that provides formal policy advice on Department of Energy (DOE) proposals and decisions at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site near Richland, Washington. Despite considerable skepticism about the effectiveness of citizen advisory boards, we contend that the HAB offers promising institutional innovations. Drawing on our analysis of the HAB's formal advice as well as our interviews with board members and agency officials, we explore the HAB's unique design, outline a normative framework for evaluating participatory institutions, and assess the HAB's effectiveness in rendering the DOE accountable to the local public.Keywords Bureaucracy . Deliberative democracy . Hanford Advisory Board . Participatory democracy . Technology Highly technical policy decisions present daunting challenges for democracy, for two reasons. First, their sheer complexity makes them difficult for even informed citizens to understand; second, these decisions are often entrusted to bureaucracies whose officials are not directly accountable to citizens and whose deliberations are often hidden from public view. In order to render government accountable to the public, citizens must be able to see how policy decisions stand to affect their interests and to understand-broadly speaking-the range of available policy alternatives. When they are unable to do so, for either of the two reasons just cited, they find themselves exposed to the discretionary power of bureaucrats, scientists, or policy experts. One of the major tasks of empirically informed democratic theory is to analyze and evaluate practices and institutions that use public participation to try to render highly technical public decision-making more transparent and accountable to the public, and therefore more legitimate (Fischer 2009;Dietz and Stern 2008;Fung and Wright 2003;Kleinman 2000;Dryzek 2010;Fishkin 2011). This paper investigates one such institution: the Hanford Advisory Board (HAB), a broadly representative, deliberative body that provides formal, policy advice on Department of Energy (DOE) proposals and decisions at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site near Richland, Washington. Critics have expressed considerable skepticism about citizen advisory boards as instruments of democratic accountability; they have criticized their lack of independence, their lack of formal power, and their failure to adequately represent affected groups (Laurian 2007; Arnstein 1969;Vari 1995;Lynn and Kartez 1995;Santos and Chess 2003). We use these concerns to frame our central research questions: Does the HAB provide effective democratic oversight and accountability at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site? If so, what specific features of the HAB enable it to serve these democratic purposes? And, more broadly, what lessons can its successes (and limitations) teach us about rendering technical, bureaucratic decisionmaking more accountable to the public?We argue that the HAB serves important democratic functions at Hanford....

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“…According to Coglianese (1997Coglianese ( : 1258, such claims notwithstanding, the value of consensus building has more often been asserted than demonstrated. Coglianese studied several consensus processes in the United States and concludes from these that, for each advantage attributed to consensus building, the same benefits can come from something other than a quest for consensus.…”

Section: Promises and Constraints Of Dialogues As Consensus Buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making a difference: On the constraints of consensus building and the relevance of deliberation in stakeholder dialogues

Kerkhof

2006

Policy Sci

124

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This article illuminates the contribution of stakeholder dialogues to environmental policy making. It makes a distinction between stakeholder dialogues as consensus building and stakeholder dialogues as deliberation. Although consensus building seems to be the dominant approach in participatory environmental policy making, this article questions the merits of consensus building and it uses the experience of the Dutch stakeholder dialogue project Climate OptiOns for the Long term (COOL) to explore, in a deliberative design, the shortcomings of a consensus-building approach and how they are possibly dealt with. The article presents the results of two deliberative methods that have been used in the COOL project -the repertory grid analysis and the dialectical approach -to demonstrate how a deliberative design can help policy makers to critically assess arguments in favor of and against a broad range of policy options, and deal with stakeholder conflict in an early phase of the policy process.

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Assessing Consensus: The Promise and Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking

Cited by 282 publications

References 5 publications

Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

The Hanford Advisory Board: participatory democracy, technology, and representation

Making a difference: On the constraints of consensus building and the relevance of deliberation in stakeholder dialogues

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