Tracing the sources of legitimacy: the impact of deliberation in participatory natural resource management

Simon Birnbaum (), Örjan Bodin and Annica Sandström

Policy Sciences, 2015, vol. 48, issue 4, 443-461

Abstract: It is widely assumed that stakeholder participation has great potential to improve the perceived legitimacy of natural resource management (NRM) and that the deliberative-democratic qualities of participatory procedures are central to the prospects of success. However, attempts to measure the actual effects of deliberation on the perceived legitimacy of participatory NRM are rare. This article examines the links between deliberation and legitimacy in participatory NRM empirically by tracing the determinants of stakeholders’ level of policy support and their views about procedural fairness. The study uses statistical methods to analyse survey data from a state-led initiative to develop new plans for ecosystem-based coastal and marine management through a participatory approach in five coastal areas in Sweden. We find that the perceived quality of deliberation had a positive impact on these aspects of legitimacy. However, both policy support and perceived procedural fairness were mainly driven by instrumental-substantive considerations rather than deliberative-democratic qualities of the process. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Participatory management; Ecosystem approach; Deliberative democracy; Legitimacy; Stakeholder participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:policy:v:48:y:2015:i:4:p:443-461

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DOI: 10.1007/s11077-015-9230-0

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