Environmental management and democratic legitimacy

Abstract

"Stakeholder processes" (about environmental politics and policy) is a phrase that can be used to describe a wide variety of group problem-solving strategies. Interested parties so interact as to identify and characterize environmental problems, to project possible solutions, and to coordinate collective action to manage these problems. Stakeholder processes discussed here are intended to contribute to making environmental policy. Such policy might be called public, but is usually not purely governmental. In stakeholder processes, input is typically sought from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Non-governmental entities consulted might include both business and non-profit community groups. This chapter points out selected issues about stakeholder processes. It is a mixture of general philosophical considerations; interpretations of various contemporary events; and particularly a discussion of one project, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation, for research in Oklahoma about water management environmental policy in connection with the Illinois River Basin in eastern Oklahoma. At worst, stakeholder processes can create a manipulated, false impression of democratic community legitimacy when there are actually major flaws in the democratic quality of decision-making practices. For example, the role of interested or affected citizens in making policy may be much attenuated and yet the policy may be depicted as citizen-generated. Such flaws may also include inadequate representation of some relevant community groups, poor environmental education, or other basic problems about institutional structures. (These are overlapping problems.) At best, stakeholder processes can better educate a community about environmental problems and better prepare it to manage its environment; stimulate the growth of new democratic institutions; and improve the prospects for the legitimacy of environmental policy. (These are overlapping gains in a best-case scenario.) Between the worst and the best, there are many possibilities.