What difference does local participation make? : contexts of engagement in regional conservation planning

This study contests the universalism of public engagement models by comparing reports of participation in three state-centered processes for regional conservation planning. Each case study analyzes intensive interviews with community members engaged in conservation in coastal U.S. cities facing rapid growth: San Diego, California; Charleston, South Carolina; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. While all three processes included a similar assortment of stakeholders, the San Diego regime pursued a model resembling empowered participatory governance, the Portsmouth regime emphasized more privatized participation building on existing institutions, and the Charleston regime resembled an exclusive machine-style growth coalition. Researchers have foregrounded the importance of formal inclusion and transparency for equitable, reasoned decision-making, but I find that interviewees did not associate transparency and inclusion with process legitimacy or civic-minded discussion. Formal public participation was often seen as superficial pageantry precisely because it created a forum for those seeking attention for ends external to process goals. In each case, participants knew that partnership was rewarded at higher levels of government, but were skeptical of participation and collaboration for its own sake. Both elites and non- elites in these communities deployed informal, backstage communication to amplify and to defuse pressure for consensus, and to manage the social capital benefits that accrued to participants. Surprisingly, the process in San Diego, which was intended to empower locals, ended up dominated by interest group professionals, while the processes managed by national interest groups solicited lay participation from diverse and reluctant sources, although how partners treated this input differed. These findings demonstrate that the study of democratic engagement can gain by exploring the contextual implementation of abstract deliberative ideals such as inclusion, publicity, and transparency. Sociologically, it is the standards of the place that matter, not researchers¹ assessments of what constitutes democratic succes