The Scope and Bias of Participation and Policy in Pacific Coast Forest Politics

Abstract

This paper compares the formal system for making state-level forest policy in California, Oregon, and Washington State. The official mechanisms for creating forest policy and the interests of the participants in policy boards and committees are described, categorized, and analyzed in light of theories of agency capture and collaborative decision making. The states are then compared both in terms of the degree to which the policy systems either tend toward collaborative or captured systems. Policy outcomes are then analyzed, through comparison of conservation measures promulgated by the regulatory forest boards in the different states, to discern whether the character of the forest policy making processes in the states correlates with the policy outcomes. In other words, if there is bias toward conservation or timber production in forest policy institutions, is that bias evident in the comparative forest policy standards in the Pacific Coast states?