Comparing Environmental Advisory Councils: How They Work and Why it Matters

Abstract

In many countries, advisory councils are the most common participatory institution in which public administration interacts with civil society around environmental issues. Nevertheless, our knowledge about them is quite limited. The main goal of this article is to show the differences they present with advisory councils in other policy areas in three main aspects: who participates, how they work, and which are their outputs. These differences are especially important because they emerge again regarding their participants’ opinions and satisfaction. We adopt a quantitative perspective in order to analyze this reality in Spain, a country where advisory councils are widespread and highly institutionalized at national, regional and local levels. After developing a mapping of 2013 existing advisory councils, we selected a sample of 55 in three policy areas. The data collected included their formal rules, composition, website characteristics and a survey to 501 participants. This set of evidence shows that environmental councils are more poorly designed, and that this is consequential since it is related with more negative opinions among their members and to a larger degree of polarization in their perceptions.

Una evaluación multidimensional de los consejos consultivos españoles: evidencias de la búsqueda infructuosa del caso modélico

“…Sus integrantes valoraron positivamente, sobre todo, la dimensión inclusividad. El balance sobre los medioambientales resulta negativo, en sintonía con investigaciones previas (Alarcón et al, 2020). Pese a que alguno (sobre todos, destaca el Consejo para la Protección de la Naturaleza de Aragón, véase tabla 4) aparece entre los mejor puntuados, observamos un panorama general en el que los esfuerzos en diseño parecen orientarse al aspecto informativo (otorgan importancia a la presencia de expertos), quedando desprovistos aspectos clave como la inclusividad y la transparencia.…”

The Closer, the Better? Comparing Advisory Councils at Different Government Levels

“…Research about public opinion and policy-making has clearly established that not all policy areas are equally sensitive to citizen input. In the specific world of ACs, Pogrebinschi and Ryan (2017) established that the type of policy has a clear effect on their potential impact, and Alarcón et al (2020) show that environmental councils have a much larger degree of conflict.…”

Beyond Advising: The Representative Role of Advisory Councils (The Case of Polish Cities)

“…Apart from the previously referenced works, the following publications draw attention:Baker (2006) Van Damme et al (2011), Boss (2017), Frączkiewicz-Wronka et al (2019),Sant and Davies (2018),Schulte (1999),Wang (2001). Th e recent return to the research on ACs can be particularly observed in works ofAlarcón et al (2020),Brugué et al (2020),Galais et al (2020),,.…”