Public Participation and Environmental Policy: What Factors Shape State Agency's Public Participation Provisions?

Abstract

Public participation is becoming increasingly common in environmental decision making. While researchers have focused on understanding why individuals get involved and the impact of their engagement, less is known about the forces that shape agency and legislative decision making regarding participation. This paper uses multinomial logistic regression to explore the determinants of public participation provisions in state hazardous waste programs over time. The results suggest that states with more liberal citizenry, higher levels of manufacturing, and urban areas are more likely to formalize the participation provisions in their hazardous waste programs. Comparatively, states with fewer Democratic representatives are more likely to informally engage in public participation procedures in their states programs. Copyright 2008 by The Policy Studies Organization.

Public participation in health care priority setting: A scoping review

“…Examples of mandated engagement would include provisions for stakeholder involvement in impact assessment under the US National Environment Protection Act [17]; Local Voices and subsequent guidance to health purchasers in the UK [18]; or the role of Community Health Councils in advising Alberta's Regional Health Authorities [19]. For cases where this could be identified (82% of the total), there was approximately a 2.25:1 ratio in favour of voluntary initiation.…”

“…15 ((stakeholder$ or public or consumer$ or community or communities or citizen$ or lay or layperson$ or laypeople or layman or taxpayer$ or grassroot$) adj1 (partner or partnering or deliberative or consensus or feedback or voice or voices or voicing or advocat$ or contribut$ or partnership$ or hearing$ or participat$ or opinion$ or input or involv$ or view$ or choice$ or role$ or responsibilit$ or value$ or preference$ or engage$ or engaging or consultation$ or consult or consulting or communicat$ or deliberate or deliberating or deliberation$ or dialogue$ or discuss or discussing or discussion$ or debate$ or interact or interacting or interaction$ or governance)).ti,ab. 16 10 or 11 or 12 or 15 17 9 and 16 journals. The remaining abstracts were retrieved, read and assessed on three criteria:…”

Local Budgeting and Public Participation

“…However, other scholars have posited that political culture can affect public participation requirements such that moralistic political cultures (e.g., Elazar 1966) are more likely to encourage public participation (Ebdon 2000). Drawing on this line of research, it is posited that states with more heavily Democratic legislatures will be more likely to have public participation laws on the books (though see Daley 2008) and that the presence of women and African Americans in state legislatures, in conjunction with a more liberal citizenry, will also positively impact the likelihood of such laws being in place.…”

Capitalistic Agency: The Rhetoric of BP's Helios Power Campaign

“…If a corporation can dictate how a social issue is framed and therefore perceived by the general public, it can highlight capitalistic agency as the appropriate response to that issue. The growing public concern for climate change and the environmental impact of fossil fuels is shaping consumers' purchasing habits (Corbett, 2006); therefore, BP is forced into the position to either undertake the costly venture of changing their business strategy or find ways to persuade consumers to believe that BP's oil operations are compatible with environmental responsibility (Daley, 2008).…”

“…For example, acts of environmental conservation do not contribute to economic growth as defined by the GDP nor do they actively contribute to an accumulation of financial capital. BP's promotion of capitalistic agency as the primary means for engaging environmental issues serves to create consumer dependency, brand loyalty, and prohibit fundamental social change that would disrupt the fossil fuel industry (Cox, 2006;Daley, 2008;Deluca, 1999;Spyke, 1999). This constraint of agentic options is interconnected with the rhetoric of participation as well as with issue alignment.…”