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Modern Forest Management:
It's About Opening Up, Not Locking Up
W. Bruce Shepard 1
I
Abstract - Ecosystem management, if it is to succeed, must involve more
than the application of improved scientific understandings; it must embrace
the political responsibilities of the land manager. The idea of forest
management as applied science was a highly successful recipe for political
success during earlier decades. This was an inadequate response to the
challenges that emerged in the 1970's. Today, the land manager must apply
an approach to forest management that encompasses scientific, _economic,
sociological, and political understandings. This will be difficult: several lines
of reasoning lead to the conclusion that the issues that land managers are
likely to face will be emotionally charged and political "no win" situations.
There are also two challenging questions that must be resolved in designing
a modem and more effective approach to forest management: how does
one blend national, regional, and local considerations? and how does one
integrate SCientific, economic, sociological,and political analyses in decision
making? Elements of answers to these questions are considered.
INTRODUCTION
have sat in seminar rooms where scientists share with
practioneers the latest fmdings on soil microorganisms and there
is electricity in the air. "Paradigm shift" is a much overused
tenn. But, in the questions being asked and being answered, I
believe that teon, in its Kuhnian sense, may appropriately
descn"be what is happening in the applied science of forestIy
(Kuhn 1962).
ForestIy is much more than applied science. The very idea
of a forest as a natural resource cannot exist apart from a society
that values the forest. Without values, forests may be forests but
they cannot be resources, whether as sources of wood fiber or
wondennent. As Shannon (1992) put it:
What we call natural resources are those connections
made manifest by social values and realized through
available, often changing, technologies. Taking this
perspective, natural resources represent the primary
organization of a society. Zimmerman's "resources are
not, they are becoming" remains the classic statement
of this continuously co-creative relationship.
Understanding the "soft" sides of forestIy can be particularly
difficult within a profession that has largely defined forest
management in terms of applied science. That approach,
trnceable to Pinehot, has a long history of considerable success.
However, the blinders it introduced left the profession
ill~uipped for the turmoil that began in the early '70' s when
the need was for better politics, not better science (Shepard 1990,
It is not just the nation's forests and its forest policy that are
undergoing critical reassessments. The profession of forestIy
itself is showing inclinations toward change. There are
roundtables on the ethical dimensions - not of forest
management per se - but of the forestIy profession itself
(Banzhaf 1993). Issues of the Journal of Forestry are devoted
to assessing the adequacy of curricula for preparing foresters.
And, there is increased attention given to issues of diversity
within the profession and within natural resource agencies
(Bembry 1990; Kennedy 1991; Pytel 1991).
That the profession is seeking reorientation seems clear. That
there is full appreciation of the depth of change required is less
clear. More mwXy still - even among those calling for change
- are the details of how a new forestIy profession might
operate.
Part of the change reflects an exhilarating inteJjection of
emerging biological understandings, including a fuller and
scientifically grounded understanding of the uncertainties and
limits that attach to scientific knowledge. This appears, at least
to a fuzzy thinking social scientist, to be very heady stuff. I
1 Assistant Vice President for Undergraduate Studies and
Associate Professor of Political Science, Office of Academic Affairs,
Oregon State University.
218
However, the dichotomy is false. Policy is made through its
application, and policy implementation is bound to have a
political element.
The role of politics in policy implementation is accentuated
in the political systems of the United States because of a
dependence on interest groups as the vehicle for linking citizens
to government. In many developed democracies, political parties
petfonn the linkage function by offering coherent programs and
canying out those programs when in power. In the United States
and for a variety of structural reasons, political parties are only
vehicles for winning elections; they are not, as Bill Clinton is
discovering, mechanisms for governing. Interest groups, almost
by default, become the mechanism for translating citizen
preferences into policy. Bargaining among interest groups is the
major mechanism for the development of public policy and that
bargaining extends from early stages of policy formation through
to policy implementation.
1\\'0 models of the policy process yield predictions about the
types of questions that are likely -to be encountered by natural
resource managers. In a model found to have wide utility,
Salisbury and Heinz (1970), building upon the wolk of Lowi
(1964), present a policy typology that relates types of public
policies to the nature of the politics - demands, and supports
- surrounding the matter. Their basic distinction is between
allocative and structural policies: allocative policies allocate they deliver the goods (or services); structural policies set up or
designate structures and processes for subsequent allocations.
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) is a structural
policy. It sets up rules and procedures - page after page but never decides the harvest controversies that caused it.
Legislation banning (or dictating) clear cutting would be an
allocative policy.
Structural and allocative policies are further broken down as
shown in Figure I. Allocative policies may be distributive if
they confer benefits to all active participants; "polk barrel" and
" log rolling" are terms typically applied to distributive policies.
Allocative policies become redistributive if there are both
winners and losers and if the losers understand that others have
benefited at their expense. Structural polices are self-regulatory
if decision making is left largely in the hands of the regulated;
professional licensing boards - e.g., for doctors, lawyers,
realtors, even wonn growers in Illinois - are common
examples. Regulatory policies redistribute power and authority,
taking power previously held by individuals or groups and
vesting that power in different arrangements.
Distinctions in types of policy depend upon differences in
the structure of political demand - is it split among many
groups or integrated? - and the net political costs to decision
makers. If the political benefits of making an allocation are
high compared with costs, then legislators will make the
allocation and reap the political benefits. If political benefits
are low relative to costs - a common occurrence in a
pluralist, interest group based politics - then structural
policies result. Put more simply: the buck is passed. NFMA
is a classic e~ple.
1993). The need to deal explicitly with contending social values
goes against the grain of long professional tradition. With all
the excitement - and controversy - about emerging scientific
understandings, one may lose sight of the fact that it is people,
not spotted owls, that are posing the most significant
professional challenges.
Today, there may be wider understanding of the need to pay
attention to the political responsibilities of the natural resource
manager. However, as Ellefson (1993) has pointed out, even in
modem university curricul~ the focus tends to be upon teaching
policy analysis but not the origins of policy in incremental
processes characterized by widespread bargaining and the use
of non-economic criteria for policy selection I will push beyond
the policy-analysis level of dealing with the political.
Some wag has obselVed that we should never look too closely
at the making of sausages or laws. I am going to get into some
of the sausage making. I will approach the subject by
considering three questions:
.
1. How do political matters end. up on the desks of
natural resource managers?
2. What are the roles of planning in politics?
3. What are the roles of politics in planning?
In a fmal section, my attention will be upon two as yet
inadequately answered questions that must be successfully
addressed in order to design a modem and more effective
approach to forest management:
1. How does one blend national, regional, and local
considerations?
2. How does one integrate scientific, economic,
sociological, and political analyses in decision
making?
HOW DO POLITICAL QUESTIONS END
UP ON THE DESKS OF NATURAL
RESOURCE MANAGERS?
In my experience, students preparing to wolk for natural
resource management agencies are almost always motivated by
a desire to be close to the resource being managed: to be on the
land. Yet, fonner students report that they spend all their time
dealing with people and paper. They are often involved deeply
- and resentfully - in political issues. How can this be?
In part, the answer is simple: to recognize the false dichotomy
between policy and administration One dominant feature of
American political culture is to hide or disguise the political
elements of decisions - to expect that decisions about who is
going to win and who is going to lose can be answered as
technical matters through three shelf-feet of EIS statements,
benefit cost analyses, and the like. We evolved institutions the city manager is an example as is the professional forest
manager - to tty to maintain the fiction of a separation between
making policy and implementing policy. This belief that
management as applied science could eliminate politics has long
and strong roots in the area of natural resources (Hays 1959).
219
ALLOCATIVE
Integrated
Re-Distributive
STRUcruRA L
~
~/
Demand
Fragmented
Distributive
[MY-SU]
. . -----::>
Self-Regulatory
[Organic Act]
Regulatory
[NFMA]
High
Low
Net Benefits to Decision Makers
Figure 1. -
Types of public policies.
The arrows in Figure 1 identify a pattern in the evolution of
public policy that Salisbwy and Heinz descnbe as common and
that seems to fit the area of forest policy. Policies start out as
self-regulatory: demands are limited and those interested in a
resource decide its use. As demands increase, distributive
policies result, each interest getting some of what it wants, as
suggested by the language of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield
Act. Eventually, demands cannot all be met, and policy is forced
to become regulatory.
It is structural policies that end up on the desks of naturnl
resource managers. These are politically difficult situations,
issues for which any particular solution (any particular
allocation) is almost certain to upset more people than will be
pleased. If there were some solution that had a positive political
payoff, then the legislature would have adopted it and claimed
the credit.
Murray Edelman (1967) took a different approach to linking
types of policies with types of politics. Edelman studied many
examples of regulatory policies, and he was interested in
explaining a phenomenon called "regulatory capture" in which
the interests being regulated end up heavily influencing those
regulating them. He distinguished between material goods e.g., money, timber, power - and symbolic goods. Symbolic
goods are actions designed to provide the unorganized but
anxious with psychological reassurance. His studies lead him to
conclude that - often in the same piece of legislation organized groups get material goods in proportion to their
bargaining strength while the unorganized get symbolic actions
that provide reassurance without conferring material benefits.
Edelman's analysis went on to observe that symbolic
reassurance kept the anxious but unorganized from getting
organized and going after material goods. This fit an earlier
period when studying such matters as the regulation of railroads
or airlines. Edelman's analysis can be expanded to recognize
that individuals care very much about symbols. Symbolic
policies involve identity, morality, and status. Capital
punishment, prayer in schools, gays in the military, and abortion
are examples of policy issues that have major symbolic
components. In contrast to what Edelman found, battles over
symbols can be the basis for effective political organization The
civil rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment are
cases where early efforts focused on largely symbolic matters
that, nevertheless, became the basis for groups to organize and
to later demand material goods. Another symbol would be the
clear cut. There is hetbicide spraying. And, of course, the spotted
owl.
When we add Lowi, Salisbury and Heinz, and Edelman
together, we get explanations of how political matters end up
on the desks of naturnl resource managers. We get more. We
get the prediction that the types of political questions that natural
resource managers are forced to deal with will be emotionally
highly charged, political "no win" situations. But, then, who
needs political science to come to that conclusion?
What are the Roles of Planning in
Politics?
Politics is about who gets what, when, and how. It is about
the authoritative allocation of things people value. It is about
winners and losers. Think about the National Forest
Management Act of 1976. That legislation had its roots in
harvest controversies on the Bitteroot and Monongahela National
Forests. When groups successfully used the language of the
Organic Act of 1897 to halt clear cutting, Congress was forced
to act. It responded with a piece of planning legislation Why?
What are the political uses of planning? What role does planning
play in politics?
There are many possible political uses of planning. In
particular cases, it may be used to open decision making
processes to wider involvement or it may be used to centralize
decision making authority. In more general tenns, planning
legislation can be politically attractive for three reasons:
1. Almost by definition, planning legislation is a
structural policy. It allows legislators to avoid the
political pain of making an allocative decision by
passing responsibility for the decision to another
body.
220
salience of preferences as well as analyses of what people prefer.
There are both empirical (why it is that way) and oormative
(why it ought to be that way) reasons.
Political decision makers - and this means natural resource
managers as well as elected officials - must pay attention to
salience if they wish to hang onto their jobs. Who is going to
follow what an official does and reward or punish that official
at the next election - or the next budget hearing? It will be
those for whom the issue is salient. This principle explains, for
example, why we do not have stronger hand gun control
legislation even though poll after poll shows that 80 percent or
more of U.S. citizens ,would prefer such legislation There is a
minority for whom the issue is very salient while, for the
majority, the issue is not salient.
The empirical "that-is-the-way-that-it-is" reason for paying
attention to salience may be initially offensive. It rubs against
our democratic sensibilities for it means that some preferences
count more than other preferences. It is an unavoidable
characteristic of our political -system: to the extent that
democratic institutions require that government officials be
responsive, the mechanisms force responsiveness to those who
participate. However, there is also an rugument that political
systems ought to pay attention to salience. This is the normative
rationale, and it is the same as is used to justify a marketplace
as a mechanism for distributing goods and selVices. Briefly put,
the logic begins with the assumption that goods should go to
those who derive the most reward from them If you prefer fine
Bordeaux wines and I am happy with Ripple, it makes no sense
to allocate the grape crop equally among us. Instead, the salience
of our preferences is measured by our willingness to pay at the
liquor store check-out counter. Note the logical leap here: we
have gone from a premise that goods should be distributed based
upon their utility to people to a conclusion that goods should
be distributed based upon prices people will pay. So long we
are comfortable with that leap - namely, with differences in
people's ability to pay - then the justification for markets, and
for paying attention to salience, is tight. Just as in the private
mruketplace, so too with some government goods and selVices,
it would be wasteful to give the same attention to my preferences
as to yours if the issue has very little value to me while the
matter is of great importance to you.
Governments rely upon two rruyor techniques for measuring
salience: making participation costly and logrolling. By making
participation costly, one obtains the preferences of those for
whom the issue is important enough to pay the costs of
participation. That, for example, is why elected officials give
more attention to mail counts than to opinion polls. An opinion
poll is, in a sense, a form of participation in which the people
conducting the poll have subsidized the costs of participation
Writing a letter requires effort. A member of Congress who
believes the polls on hand gun control legislation instead of mail
counts will not be responding to salience and risks losing office.
Polls, testimony at public meetings, and the like, suffer from
the "strategic lying" problem If participants believe someone
else will pay the costs of what they want, then they have an
2.
Planning legislation provides symbolic reassurance to
the anxious but unorganized. There is the
appearance of having done something even if none
of the underlying controversies have been addressed.
3. Planning approaches can improve the legitimacy of
the decisions that eventually result.
The last point requires elaboration. Governments worry
enonnously about their legitimacy. Policies viewed as legitimate
will be obeyed. If policies do not have legitimacy, governments
can soon exhaust their resources in trying to enforce policies.
Controversial policies will be accepted as legitimate by many if
the processes that produced the· policies are accepted as
legitimate. Consequently, governments invest great effort in
designing processes that are accepted as legitimate when
controversial decisions are anticipated.
To figure out what will make processes legitimate, one must
look at a country's political culture. In the United States,
processes that provide opportuni1;ies for participation have
increased legitimacy. Since it is extremely difficult for
individuals to trace the influence of their participation through
to [mal policy outcomes, it is the opportunity for participation,
and not its effectiveness, that is politically relevant. Second, our
political culture places great emphasis on decision making that
incorporates non-political, scientific, rational, quantitative,
technical analysis. That questions of winners and losers cannot
be settled on scientific grounds is irrelevant to the political cover
provided by such processes. Planning processes, of course, can
appeal to both key values. This is the greatest political attraction
of planning, and planning legislation has been the institutional
response to many allocation controversies. Politically, the
attraction of planning is not that it might lead to making better
decisions~ rather, it makes decisions look better.
as
What are the Roles of Politics in
Planning?
Whatever the role of politics may be in planning, it will
involve interest groups. In the United States, it is interest groups
that provide governments with political information. For
simplicity, the examples and illustrations that follow sometimes
refer to individuals. Please keep in mind that, in the real world,
individuals are usually represented politically by the groups that
they belong to and support. There are both advantages and
disadvantages to such a system for linking citizens to
government. It is, though, a political reality that natural resource
managers must recognize.
In planning, politics provides information about what people
want. More important, it conveys information about how badly
people and their groups want things. It is this last type of
information - known to political scientists as "salience" that is the central contribution of politics to planning processes.
Planning processes must incorporate information about the
221
an opinion poll is the only basis for allocating areas, eve:ry area
will go to snowmobilers. That would not only be inequitable what about the poor skiers? - but would also be highly
inefficient. Even areas that are worthless for snowmobiling but
highly prized by cross count:ry skiers would be closed to skiing.
Imagine two other approaches. In the logrolling approach,
managers could estimate which areas are most important to
snowmobilers and which areas are of greatest importance to
cross count:ry skiers and offer a forest plan that takes advantage
of such trading opportunities. Or, participation could be made
costly. Imagine something as simple as an area-by-area election
where the choicesI are "snowmobile only" or "cross count:ry ski
only." Snowmobilers, because we have assumed that they are
more numerous, may win the first few elections. Eventually,
though, they become at least somewhat sated while the cross
count:ry skiers are becoming panicked. Or, areas of little value
for snowmobiling but of great value for cross country skiing
may come up for a vote. Participation by snowmobilers drops
while participation by skiers ~creases. Cross count:ry skiers start
winning elections. By this very simple device of making
participation costly - and not by listening to what people say
things are worth to them - resources are allocated in a way
that is more equitable and more efficient than would have been
the case if an opinion poll - eve:rybody's preference counting
equally - had been used.
Providing infonnation about salience is a key role for politics
in natural resource planning. However, the two common
techniques for obtaining this infonnation - logrolling and
making participation costly - have imbedded within them a
guarantee that, if they alone are relied upon, they will fail.
Academics who study public choice identify logrolling as a
useful technique whereby legislative bodies can achieve the
provision of optimal levels of public goods. Yet, newspapers
treat logrolling as an unseemly and disreputable practice. In part,
this may be because logrolling requires that representatives vote
against the interests of their constituents on matters of less
importance. It is also true that tenns like "polk barrel" are
frequently attached to the results of logrolling. Logrolling wotks
in theo:ry if all affected individuals can participate in the
decision However, if the costs of providing a public good can
be transferred to non-participants, then logrolling can lead to
over provision Legislation laden with ridiculously inefficient
water projects would be a typical example. Various interests in
assorted districts trade support for each other's projects, and the
practice fails on efficiency grounds because the costs of the
projects are transferred to the general taxpayer who is not
involved in the trading.
Logrolling fails when costs can be transferred to
nonparticipants. There will always be strong incentives to make
the transfer, to make somebody else pay. Note that the second
means for measuring salience - making participation costly assures that there will be nonparticipants. One technique for
measuring salience guarantees conditions that will lead the
other to fail. Economists build a rationale for governmental
involvement because "matket failures" lead to the under supply
incentive to overstate its value. If people believe they may be
forced to pay entirely for what they desire, then they may
understate its value. The histo:ry of the testimony of grazing
interests on user fees for grazing on public lands is replete with
examples of the strategic lying problem. People cannot, though,
lie with their behavior. They either pay the costs of participating
by participating. Or, they don't. So, at a public meeting, it is
not what the people who show up say that counts; it is who
shows up that conveys the relevant political infonnation on
salience.
Logrolling is the other technique for obtaining infonnation
on salience. Logrolling involves bartering away one's support
on something of less importance to obtain another's support on
something of greater importance. It often occurs in legislatures.
Imagine a senator from North Carolina and a senator from
Oregon getting together to discuss two bills: a bill the Oregon
senator wants that would promote replanting of clear cuts in the
Pacific Northwest and a bill to provide tobacco price supports
introduced by the solon from 1{orth Carolina. Though the North
Carolina senator may be opposed to helping economic rivals in
the Pacific Northwest with a timber subsidy and even though
the Oregon senator may oppose using her constituents' tax
dollars to help tobacco farmers produce a poison, each senator
may agree to swap votes and support both bills. This can occur
if the "no" vote that each would give up is worth less than the
''yes'' vote that each would obtain in exchange. Salience is
revealed in the trades that people are willing to make. (Note,
again, it is not what people say, but their actual behavior - just
as in a private marketplace - that reveals infonnation about
salience.)
Logrolling need not be restricted to legislatures. You and your
family probably engaged in logrolling to figure out this
summer's vacation plans. (You certainly did if, like me, you had
four teenagers to deal with.) A set of alternative forest plans can
be thought of as a group of possible logrolling packages
designed to offer various trading opportunities. Successful
logrolling packages make distinctions based upon salience; they
offer people opportunities to obtain something of greater
importance to them by giving up something of less importance.
The extension of logrolling and making participation costly
to the goods and services that governments provide may not be
obvious. Consider an example. Imagine an extremely simple
national forest on which there are only two uses: snowmobiling
and cross count:ry skiing. As this is a greatly simplified
illustration, I will call this the Dan Qualye Nationale Forest.
Further imagine that, since these two categories of users do not
get along well, that the management of the DQNF have
subdivided the forest into many different areas, each of which
will be allocated to one or the other use. Your problem, as a
manager, is to decide how each area will be designated: for
exclusive cross count:ry skiing or for exclusive snowmobiling.
If we did not rely upon salience and instead conducted an
opinion poll, then the outcome would depend upon which of
the two groups of users were most numerous. Imagine that a
slight majority of the potential users are snowmobilers. Then, if
222
Integrating National, Regional, and Local
Concerns
of public goods. However, "government failures" can lead to
the over supply of publicly provided goods. This realization is
important in natural resource management for it suggests partial
answers to questions that I wish to explore in conclusion
How are natural resource management policies ,-- say, a
forest plan - to integrate national, regional, and local
constraints and concerns? As Behan (1972) pointed out twenty
years ago, one may start by interacting with local interest groups.
However, it is dangerous to assume that local politics are a
microcosm of regional or national politics. Different groups have
different degrees of influence depending upon the level of
government involved. Even within a single sector, say in wood
products, national ftrq1S with headquarters out-of-state are not
going to be able to compete as effectively with local finns if
decisions are being made at multiple local sites.
A great deal of political bargaining can be involved in simply
establishing the level at which decisions will be reached, and
groups will seek to force decisions to that level at which they
are most influential. Federalism is not a tight structure of clearly
defined governmental authorities. Rather, the pattern of
intergovernmental arrangements that exist at any particular
moment is a dynamic and changing bargain among various
interests concerning the appropriate arrangement of
responsibilities. Not a layer cake but a matble cake that never
quite makes it to the oven
From the perspective of a ranger or a forest supervisor, a
wotkable model might be one in which statute, "Washington
Office," and regional policies establish the boundaries within
which "on the ground" policies and decisions are developed.
This seems to be the model implicit in the organization of the
Forest Service Manual and Handbook. The approach has some
utility. Laws reflecting interests articulated at the national level
do establish constraints: say, in the area of protecting cultural
heritage, in the procedures for etwironmental impact statements,
and the like. Consider, though, the Endangered Species Act. This
is as unambiguous a piece of federal legislation as is ever likely
to emerge from Congress; it lacks the usual weasel words and
delegations of responsibility and is, consequently, allocative
rather than structural. The statute is a statement of interests that
have been effectively articulated at the national level. But, that
has not lead to much clarity concerning just what are the real
national political constraints that must be recognized in local
decision making. Instead, there has been paralysis.
There are several difficulties with a model of hierarchically
arranged le~els of legal and policy constraints as a way to
integrate national concerns with local decisions. For reasons
discussed earlier, structural and symbolic legislation adopted at
the national level will frequently and intentionally avoid
providing specific guidance on the controversies that gave rise
to the act. Witness NFMA. More important, national institutions
are increasingly incapable of providing any kind of guidance.
James Madison designed for us a political system that multiplied
points of access to reduce the possibility of rule by a "majority
faction" We ended up getting government by "interest group
veto." Neither Congress nor the executive nor the bureaucracy
nor the courts have the capacity or the inclination to exert
CONCLUSION
Challenges for Modern .Forest Resource
Management
A forestry that approaches resource management and
allocation as largely a technical problem amenable to technical
solutions - bigger and more ~ophisticated versions of
FORPLAN - is inadequate (Alston and Iverson 1987). It
simply follows the trajectOlY of the past in which forest
management was defined in tenns of applied science. Foresuy
today is about values, cultures, communities, and also about
politics, about winners and losers. That recognition is, itself, a
significant step fOlWard in developing modem forest resource
management. Programs like "New Perspectives" are attempting
to bring together such significant changes: a shift from emphasis
upon the production of wood fiber toward protecting ecosystem
vitality; the introduction of emerging scientific understandings;
and, a recognition of the social and political responsibilities of
the forest manager.
What does it mean to recognize the political elements in
resource management? This paper has explored some elementary
implications. Paying attention to the political means recognizing
that it is the politically most difficult and most emotionally
charged issues that are likely to end up being assigned to public
natural resource management agencies. It means understanding
the important role of planning processes in lending legitimacy
to unavoidably controversial decisions. It means that, in
managing natural resources, one must pay attention not only to
what people want but also to how badly people want things. It
does not mean finding the final, politically correct solution;
rather, it involves assisting a society in a constant process of
reevaluating and redefming what constitutes appropriate uses of
the nations's forests. It does not mean locking up, it means
opening up.
I see two major procedural questions that must be addressed
before there is a system of mQdern forest management adequate
to the tasks ahead. The questions are: how does one blend
national, regional, and local considerations?, and how does one
integrate scientific, economic, sociological, and political
analyses in natural resource decision making? As in any flexible
and evolving human system, we will never find "the right
answer" to these questions. Rather, we will experiment, fail, and
experiment again
223
complementary rather than duplicative. Consequences identified
through economic analyses add to the broader range of effects
identified through social impact assessments. Inferences about
economic demand are quite different from the infonnation on
demand provided by political assessments. They address the
demands of different audiences. There is a more fundamental
difference. While economic analyses can provide useful insights
into overall efficiencies, demands for goods including public
goods, net social benefits, and the like, it is individuals - not
societies - that pay costs and receive benefits. Economic
analysis cannot, generally, provide conclusions about whether
any particular distribution of costs and benefits is preferable.
Who will win and who will lose? Societies have governments
- including natural resource managers - to handle such
distributional questions, and that is where political information
becomes germane.
The complementarities go further. Earlier, I introduced the
notion of "salience" as an important dimension of political
information That presentation ended with a significant dilemma:
mechanisms that are available to assess salience will, if solely
relied upon, guarantee inefficient resource allocations. The
problem arises because political analyses of salience must,
necessarily, be restricted to identifying the interests of those for
whom the issues are important. Many, indeed most people, are
left out of any particular analysis. Yet, decisions may have
consequences for them Large groups, each of whom have a
small stake in the outcome of a natural resource decision will
be particularly disadvantaged by political participation
mechanisms. Well designed social impact assessments and
economic analyses provide decision makers with information
about these consequences. To the extent that political analyses
allow decision making latitude, the natural resource manager can
use this information to move decisions toward greater efficiency
and greater equity than would emerge were the salient interests
of the most involved participants the only guide.
Social impact assessments and economic analyses can also
shape public political involvement. The results of such analyses
about policy consequences can change people's perceptions of
various options, thereby shifting their political demands.
Education can occur. However, this possibility may often be
overstated. The politically involved generally already have above
average levels of information and, more important, have strongly
held opinions and beliefs. Discordant messages are unlikely to
penetrate these perceptual barriers. Social impact assessments
and economic analyses may, however, identify logrolling options
that were not apparent to the participants. Such analyses may
also change the mix of participants by providing information
that provokes other interests to realize that they have a stake in
decisions.
Social, economic, and political analyses provide needed,
complementary information How is that information to be
integrated with other assessments, in particular, with scientific
understandings about the natural resource being managed? One
finds prominent ecologists emphasizing the role of the social
sciences (Hardin 1968). And, there are social scientists who
leadership. Instead, publics and their leaders focus upon largely
symbolic entertainments, pale imitations of governing.
Frustrations grow. This is the fundamental predicament for the
"on-the-ground" natural resource manager: not only is there
inadequate guidance from above, but "higher ups" may very
well be issuing contradictory demands - e.g., congressional
requirements to protect sustainability while keeping the ASQ's
up - and solutions developed locally may be vetoed on up the
line. The delicate WaIp and weave in the fabric of federalism
woven by James Madison is tearing.
At least part of the answer is to start the reweaving process
at the local level. This means iriterest group politics at the local
level: messy sausage making involving bargaining, logrolling,
interests, influence, and salience. It means exploring ad hoc and
quasi-governmental arrangements outside the ordinary way of
approaching problems. It means involving "outsiders" throughout resource management processes and procedures. It means
experimentation, which means failing. And, it means local
officials sensitively understanding national and regional interests
and, in so doing, providing the leadership that our national
political institutions may be structurally incapable of delivering.
Integrating Scientific, Social, Political, and
Economic Analyses
Whether it is a simple draft environmental impact statement
or a complex, interagency regional management plan, many
types of information must be brought together. Figuring out how
to accomplish this integration is, perhaps, the single greatest
challenge for the development of a modem forest management.
I will approach the subject in two parts, first identifying the
complementarities among social, political, and economic
analyses, and then exploring how these analyses are integrated
with scientific understandings of the physical and biological
resources being managed.
Political information - for example, the results of public
involvement processes - economic analyses, and social impact
assessments are frequently confused. However, they serve quite
different but complementary purposes. The differences in
purposes need to be understood if appropriate designs for each
analysis are to be employed (Shepard 1981). Natural resource
management and planning boil down, at its most basic level, to
answering two questions: where do we want to be tomorrow?
and where will today's decisions (or lack of decisions) leave us
tomorrow? Political analyses address the frrst question: "where
do we want to be?" Social impact assessments and economic
analyses do not. Rather, those efforts help answer the second
question: "what are the consequences tomorrow of the options
we are considering today?"
Social impact assessments provide information on how people
will be affected. Political analyses reveal infonnation about what
people want, about demand. Economic analyses provide both
types of information - impacts and demands - but are
224
• Professional judgement and ethics are crucial
ingredients of decision making processes.
Professional ethics are a source for criteria that will
be used to evaluate options. Professional standards
are also the basis for determining the reliability and
the validity of the various assessments that are used
in making decisions.
The basic view taken in this section can be summarized
diagrammatically. Starting at the left side of Figure 2, decisions
are the result of evaluations of the consequences of various
options. Alternatives are judged based upon how close they get
us to where we wan~ to be. The values to be applied to the
consequences come from political analyses, professional ethics,
and intetpretations of applicable laws and policies. The
consequences to be evaluated result from various assessments
and professional judgments as to the soundness of those
assessments.
Figure 2 represents one type of answer to the question of
integrating different sources of i!lformation in natural resource
decision making. It is also possible to approach the question as
a challenge in human relationships. In natural resource
management, the interdisciplinary team is an example of this
approach. Rather than tty to precisely define uses for each type
of analysis, a sociological - and political ~ institution is
designed with the expectation that it will achieve the desired
reject that position (Crowe 1969) or who would leave the ball
in the ecologist's court (Caldwell 1987). Sort of an
interdisciplinary tennis match.
Whatever the type of analysis - social or biological several principles seem to apply:
• Information is not understanding. Understanding is
the result of a creative act by the observer and
"accepted" understandings - scientific or political
- are the result of ongoing social processes.
• Facts have no meanings until humans intetpret
them. No amount of data collection is going to
obviate the need for judgement.
• Science does not make decisions. Societies do.
Whether society should take .an action that will lead
to the extermination of a species is a political, not
a scientific, question.
• Information and understandings will always be
incomplete, tentative, subject to change, and
possibly wrong. During
long life, one will
mistakenly reject the null ·hypothesis at the .05
level 1 in 20 times. One will never know which of
the times were the errors. Risks must be taken. This
does suggest weighing the consequences of various
types of errors in establishing when to be
particularly cautious.
a
Other Assessments
(Biological,
economic, ... )
1
Social Impact
Assessment
I
Estimation of
i
J
--+
1
---~
Professional
Judgement and
Ethics
Political
Analysis
I
--+~_______
E_f_f_e_c_t_s________=
Criteria for
Evaluating Effects
Evaluat ion of
Eff ects
a nd
Compari son of
Alter natives
!Decision
j
i
Laws/Policies
Affecting Acceptability of Certain
Effects
Figure 2. -
Integrating political, social, economic, and biological information in natural resource decision making.
225
integration of understandings. On-the-ground "New
Perspectives" experimentation with structures that incorporate
" non-traditional" publics provides other examples (Lichen
1993). Wondolleck's (1988) advocacy of conflict management
techniques and Brown and Peterson's (1993) suggested use of
" citizen juries" are other examples of the more general strategy:
to integrate various understandings by focusing upon the
structuring of inteq>ersonal communication and social and
political relationships rather than upon the flow charting of steps
in a process. There are many ways in which one might
restructure decision making to achieve an improved forest
management although, being· nontraditional, the variations
require imagination to conceive, organizational fleXIbility for
implementation, and a willingness to risk failure.
With today's controversies and challenges, it is easy to lose
track of how far natural resource management has come in
"opening up" to publics, to perfonning the political act of
allocating resowces based, in part, on assessments of what
people want and how badly thej want things. Twenty years ago,
lack of responsiveness to publics lead to harvest controversies
and then to the National Forest Management Plan (Weitzman
1977). Fifteen years ago, euphemisms like "institutional
analysis" still had to be used to refer to political responsibilities
(Shepard 1980). Even when such euphemisms were used,
personnel in agencies like the Forest Service denied that their
jobs entailed such responsibilities, asserted that such matters
were for "higher ups" to take care of, and the "much higher
ups" were reluctant to provide line personnel with increased
understanding of means for being politically responsive to
publics. Undertakings like "New Perspectives" and "ecosystem
management" represent a dramatic change from that earlier
orientation because they acknowledge that social and political
responsiveness is a legitimate aspect of a forest manager's job,
and this is found both in agency policy (Salwasser 1990;
Robertson 1992; Kessler 1992; Overbay 1992) and practioneers'
beliefs (Clatk 1991). "Being responsive" and "opening up"
sound great. However, as this paper has explored, the political
aspects of natural resource management are complex,
challenging, and may require uncomfortable confrontations with
conventional assumptions about the uses of both political and
scientific infonnation in decision making.
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