Understanding drivers of adaptive policymaking: a case study of South Atlantic Fishery Management Council

• In Event: Adaptation Strategies in Collaborative Environmental Management

Abstract

Adaptive policymaking has gained interest in both academia and practice in contemporary collaborative environmental governance. Adaptive policymaking entails policy design that accounts for the different policy scenarios and contingencies that may materialize as policies are applied in uncertain and dynamic conditions. Collaborative environmental governance can enable adaptative policymaking by convening a diversity of stakeholders with varying resources, viewpoints, and knowledge to advise on the types of scenarios and contingencies that may arise as policies are put into practice. Policy scholars have proposed several frameworks to foster understanding of how institutional factors enable adaptive policymaking. However, underexplored within existing research is how procedural variables – specifically, how different stakeholders are represented in collaborative processes, types of knowledge communicated among stakeholders in these processes, and inter-personal conflict materializing in deliberations – contribute to adaptive policymaking.

Responding to this dearth in existing research, this study investigates: (i) whether representation of specific stakeholders (namely, public, private, scientists, citizen stakeholders) within collaborative environmental processes is associated with the adoption of more or less adaptive policy options; (ii) whether communication of certain types of knowledge (e.g., scientific, practical , and community knowledge) within these processes is associated with the adoption of adaptive policy options; and (iii) whether inter-personal conflict moderates the effect of representation and knowledge on the adoption of adaptive policy decision options.

The collaborative environmental governance case in which these questions are investigated is one of the eight fisheries management councils engaged in the regulation of the U.S. fishing industry, the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council. One-hundred and ninety of the Council’s actions taken between 2008 and 2013 are analyzed to determine qualities of the deliberation associated with each action and the specific policy options generated from action deliberations. Utilizing a Large Language Model to process textual data capturing council deliberations and multinomial logit regression capturing the adaptive quality of selected policy options, this study finds that the utilization of scientific knowledge, use of community knowledge, and participation of scientists in policy action deliberations have a positive impact on adaptive policymaking. In addition, the study finds that utilization of practical knowledge and participation of federal government officials have a negative impact on adaptive policymaking. In analyzing the moderating effect of inter-personal conflict, this study finds that conflict negatively moderates the relationship between knowledge diversity and policymaking.

Overall, this paper advances the study of adaptive policymaking in collaborative environmental governance by furthering understanding of how knowledge, representation, and conflict relate to the adoption of policy decisions with adaptive qualities. In doing so, it lends guidance for policymakers on how to design and facilitate collaborative processes engaged in the formulation of policies in uncertain and dynamic environmental conditions.

Authors

• Shuping Wang, Syracuse University
  Presenting Author

• Saba Siddiki, Syracuse University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author