Constructing the Public Sphere in Compromised Settings: Environmental Governance in the Alberta Forest Sector (Report‪)‬

RECENT INTEREST IN CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT IN governance networks has invigorated scholarship on citizenship and democracy. Within particular policy areas, such as environmental politics in Canada, experiments in citizen participation designed to emulate a deliberative democratic format have been in evidence for at least 30 years (Berger 1977; Sadler 1977). This trend has escalated, coinciding with the devolution of state-led regulatory frameworks and the subsequent emergence of market-based and voluntary environmental management initiatives. Many of these formats are susceptible to distortion, however, due to the tremendous power enjoyed by private and state participants relative to citizen participants. Considering the growing citizen dependence on "stakeholder-based" processes as one of few opportunities to participate in decision making, greater attention to the social dynamics and the context of citizen participation within such constrained venues is warranted. Treatments of public participation in environmental politics abound from scholars in numerous fields (e.g., see McDaniels et al. 1999; Ribot 1999; Dryzek 2000; Pellizzoni 2001). Dorcey and McDaniels (2001) identify several stages of what they call "citizen engagement in environmental management" in Canada. Starting in the late 1960s, a state-managerialist orientation translated into greater lay involvement in planning and policymaking initiatives--the prototype being the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Berger 1977). This gave way to pluralist approaches to political participation, in which business and civil society play a more active role. Van Tatenhove and Leroy (2003) identify a similar transition in Europe. One mechanism driving the integration of market-based decision-making and civic engagement has been the success of third-party environmental performance standards (i.e., Responsible Care 14001), particularly forestry certification systems (i.e., Pan European Forest Certification, Forest Stewardship Council). These evolutions in regulation represent a societalization and marketization of environmental politics (Van Tatenhove and Leroy 2003), by constructing a postbureaucratic political terrain that brings together state, nonstate, and industry actors to establish standards to which commercial operators must adhere in exchange for "green" product labeling.