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Paper draft submitted to the workshop on “Sustainable Governance of Rural Areas: Changes,

Challenges and Conflicts”, ECPR Joint Session of Workshops, Salamanca April 10th-15th 2014

Inclusive and broad mobilization in collaborative rural governance?

The case of Natural Park Management Boards of Norway

Aase Kristine Aasen Lundberg PhD fellow, Department of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning, Norwegian University of Life

Sciences.

e-mail: aase.kristine.lundberg@umb.no

Sissel Hovik

Associate professor, Department of Public Administration, Oslo and Akershus University College of

Applied Sciences

e-mail: sissel.hovik@hioa.no

Abstract: In 2009 Norway launched a comprehensive management reform of national parks and other large protected areas. Management responsibility was transferred from regional state level to newly appointed management boards comprised by elected politicians from affected municipalities. The introduction of this collaborative governance system empowers local actors, as local mayors get a prominent role in the National Park boards. It opens for mobilization through different democratic channels, i.e. the system of local representative democracy, through lobbying local politicians, through the design of channels for participatory democracy and through local mass media. It is, however, a question to what extent the reform results in a shift from a system dominated by technocratic elites to a system dominated by political elites, rather than toward a system for broad mobilization of local actors.

Based on data from a survey covering members of the National park boards and advisory groups, document studies and interviews in a smaller number of areas, we will address questions such as who participates and through which channels. Will the multiple channels for local participation result in activation of a diversity of actors, or will few actors dominate all these channels? Furthermore, we address questions related to the effects of such decentralization on how the areas are managed: Will there be an improvement in the system’s ability to handle land use conflicts and to promote mutual understanding and trust across levels of governance? How to design collaborative governance systems in order to secure democratic anchorage and local participation has been a central focus in both the literature on collaborative governance and on nature protection. We will address this subject trough the study of the Norwegian reform, which we believe represent an interesting case of collaborative governance in nature conservation.

Key words: Collaborative governance, democratic anchoring, protected areas, local mobilization

1. Introduction:

Demands for increased local participation and influence in natural resource management and

conservation processes have been a recurrent theme over the last decades (Fauchald & Gulbrandsen

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2012; Hovik et al. 2010; Zachrisson 2010). During the same period there has been a pronounced

political goal to combine both use and protection of natural resources to benefit local communities

affected by national conservation policies. Rural sustainable development, through a combination of

conservation and sustainable use have been put high on both political and research agenda.

A response to the complex challenges rural communities face has been to decentralize responsibility

and authority from central government to a level closer to the affected areas, opening up for new

forms of interaction and decision making associated with collaborative governance. The background

for this response has been a desire to increase the legitimate foundation for natural resource

management through local participation and experience-based knowledge. Reduced conflict level,

mutual learning and increased understanding between stakeholders and public agencies across

government levels has also been emphasized. Under the elusive concept of collaborative governance

new approaches to rural development, including co-management, private-public partnerships,

interactive decision making and stakeholder involvement, have been pursued. Seeking to address a

multitude of different issues, these new collaborative governance approaches take different forms,

involving a wide range of stakeholders with different interests. The term collaborative governance

raises the expectations of a sweet reward, as Ansell and Gash puts it (2008 p. 561): “It seems to

promise that if we govern collaboratively, we may avoid the high costs of adversarial policy making,

expand democratic participation, and even restore rationality to public management.” It is not

surprisingly then that governments at all levels are making considerable investments in collaborative

strategies (Koontz & Thomas 2006). The newly adopted local management model for large

conservation areas in Norway, such as national parks and landscape protection areas is one such

attempt. It is a comprehensive reform that has been carried out over a short period of time. Since

2009 management responsibility and authority has been transferred from the county governor

(regional state level) to inter-municipal conservation boards with locally elected politicians from

affected municipalities. Today approximately 40 conservation boards have been established,

including almost 150 affected municipalities. Through the reform advisory groups with different

stakeholders and administrative contact groups with municipal officials have been established and

local conservation managers have been employed. It is the experiences from the Norwegian local

management model and the diverse collaborative arrangements that form the basis for this paper.

Collaborative governance is believed to offer a favorable institutional setting for increased

participation and stakeholder involvement (Ansell and Gash 2008). The Norwegian reform gives both

elected politicians and stakeholder groups formal access to decision making processes. As studies of

(multi-level) governance networks have showed, this is no guarantee for neither active involvement

nor influence (Edelenbos & Klijn 2006; Klijn & Koppenjan 2012; Le Galès 2001; Olsson 2003). In this

paper, we aim to study the involvement of local actors through different democratic channels.

Inspired by the literature on democratic anchorage of governance networks (Edelenbos et al. 2010;

Sørensen & Torfing 2007) we concentrate on both the representative democratic channel and the

participatory democratic channel, and ask to what extent local actors are mobilized through these

channels in the conservation management. Furthermore, we aim to explore the consequences of

such mobilization for the outcome of the collaborative governance, understood as the actors’

perception of successful outcome.

This paper is a contribution to understand how political participation and stakeholder involvement in

conservation management affects the democratic anchoring of rural collaborative governance.

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The first section introduces our theoretical approach, before the background for the local

management model is briefly described. The third section describes the empirical material and the

different methods deployed. Then, the empirical material and our findings are presented, before we

discuss these in relation to the theoretical framework. We end with some concluding remarks.

2. Theoretical approach

Collaborative governance

As already mentioned collaborative governance has been uses to describe a wide range of different

collaboration arrangements between public agencies, private actors and civil society. It is a mode of

governance that emphasizes inclusion of different stakeholders in consensus-oriented decision

making processes together with public agencies. According to Emerson et al. (2012) the concept of

collaborative governance can be traced back to quite different theoretical traditions, one of them

being the common-pool resource literature associated with Ostrom’s work (1990). Natural resource

management is only one among several policy fields where collaborative governance has been

pursued (Emerson et al. 2012; Koontz & Thomas 2006). Not surprisingly then, different approaches

to collaborative governance can be found within the existing literature (Ansell & Gash 2008).

Emerson et al. (2012) argues for a broad approach that extends beyond traditional focus on public

sector and state-initiated formal forums, while Ansell and Gash (2008, p. 544) stress precisely the

formal, state initiated aspect:

A governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets.

According to Ansell and Gash (2008) this definition emphasizes that the forum is initiated by public

agencies or institutions, that non-governmental actors participates and that these actors are not

merely “consulted” but rather included directly in the decision making process. This is of particular

interest since we explore how the stakeholders in the advisory groups participate in the formal

management system and their own assessment of this participation. One assumption is that the

different actors’ satisfaction with the stakeholder groups are linked to how their participation affects

the decision making process and whether the stakeholder groups participates beyond consultation or

information sharing. Furthermore, the forum should be formally established with an aim to reach

consensus among the different stakeholders and finally that the focus of the collaboration should be

public policy or public management (Ansell & Gash 2008).

In line with Ansell and Gash’s (2008) definition above, collaborative governance can be understood

as a subcategory of governance networks. Compared to more loose cooperation between public

sector and different stakeholder groups, collaboration implies a more permanent, committed and

formalized relationship (Thomson & Perry 2006). This collaboration can be mandatory, but it is

typically voluntary, based on a need to collaborate to approach complex or wicked problems with

limited effect or possibility to govern hierarchically (Ansell & Gash 2008). Democratic anchoring is

believed to be important for governance networks because it is an attempt to account for the

democratic quality of these networks by revealing how they relate to traditional democratic

institutions and more general acknowledged principles of democratic procedures (Edelenbos et al.

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2010). According to Sørensen and Torfing (2005) these networks are not by definition democratic or

undemocratic, their democratic nature is rather dependent on the historical and political context

they emerge within and are a part of. Approaching collaborative governance arrangements through

their degree of democratic anchoring allows for an examination of the extent they are linked to

different political constituencies and to a relevant set of democratic norms and rules (Edelenbos et al

2010). Sørensen and Torfing (2005) argues that

…democratic anchoring is a function of the different forms of democratic legitimacy that are obtained when a governance network is controlled by democratically elected politicians; represents a membership basis of the participating groups and organizations; is accountable to the territorially defined citizenry; and follows the democratic rules specified by a particular grammar of conduct.

Through these four anchoring points the democratic performance of governance networks can be

assessed, but this is a question of degree rather than a matter of all or nothing. Torfing et al. (2009)

argues that since the representative democracy is unable to provide an undisputed source of

legitimacy due to the weakened link between voters and elected politicians, it is important to

supplement it with the three other dimensions, and a combination of the four is believed to provide

a strong source of democratic legitimacy.

While Sørensen and Torfing (2007) and Torfing et al. (2009) make use of all the four anchoring

dimensions in different case studies from Denmark, Edelenbos et al. (2010) limit their approach to

the two first criteria in a study of democratic anchoring in Dutch environmental projects. On the

contrary to what have been stressed in literature about the importance of including politicians to

strengthen the democratic basis for governance processes and networks, Edelenbos et al. (2010)

found that stakeholder involvement actually is more important when assessing the outcome. It

seems that politics today plays a more marginal role in providing good decision-making outcomes.

Based on these findings they argue that good inclusion of stakeholders in both design and

organization is essential and they regard this as a precondition for reaching good outcomes in

complex environmental governance projects.

Based on these findings, we have also limited our approach to democratic anchoring by an emphasis

on political and stakeholder involvement. Since the conservation boards in Norway consist of locally

elected politicians, we approach the first anchoring point (control by democratically elected

politicians) with an emphasis on mobilization through the representative democratic channel and the

activation and mobilization of the broader local and regional political level. We are interested in the

extent board members interact with other politicians and how the local and regional councils are

involved in issues related to management of the protected areas. Since stakeholder involvement can

take different forms, we approach the second anchoring point in a twofold manner: with an

emphasis on the contact between board members and stakeholder groups and mobilization through

the participatory channel in stakeholder groups. Lastly, we are also interested in what the effects of

mobilization are on outcomes.

3. Background – Local management of large protected areas

As in other western countries Norwegian nature conservation has been state-centered and

hierarchical structured, giving natural sciences a predominant position. In 2009 this changed. A

comprehensive management reform of national parks and landscape protected areas was launched

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in the central government budget (St.prp.no.1 2009-2010). Management responsibility was

transferred from regional state level to newly appointed management boards comprised by elected

politicians from affected municipalities. A basis for this reform was a trial period during the 2000’s

where four large conservation areas tested out different localized governance systems, with different

decentralization of power and responsibility to the effected municipalities. In addition, the four areas

involved local stakeholders differently. Experiences from the four trial areas where evaluated (Falleth

& Hovik 2008) and a disputed discussion followed reflecting different views on local authorities’

ability to manage conservation areas of national and international importance. The decision to

decentralize management responsibility was taken as part of the central government budget for

2009-2010 and this had important implications for how well the reform was prepared. Fauchald and

Gulbrandsen (2012) argues that this explains the limited public debate the reform caused. This might

be true at the national level, but at the local and regional level the new management system

received considerably media coverage, revealing high expectation to what local management could

(and should) deliver.

In policy documents the goal of the reform is to combine local anchoring and holistic management of

the different areas in line with conservation regulations (St.prp.no.1 2009-2010). Apart from these

two aspects, it is also a goal that the management should be knowledge based, with inclusion of both

scientific and local knowledge. This is sought through the inclusion of local stakeholders and user

groups in advisory boards.

Approximately 150 municipalities where invited to participate in the new management model, and a

vast majority accepted the new management responsibility. During the following years

approximately 35 conservation boards have been established. From the national level the

municipalities were encouraged to nominate mayor or deputy mayor as their representative, but due

to gender quota the boards consist of a mix of mayors, deputy mayors and a large degree of

municipal council’s politicians. Affected counties are also included in the boards with regional

political representation, and in areas where it is relevant the Sami Parliament assigns Sami

representation. The Ministry of Environment formally appoints the boards, and these local and

regional politicians are accountable upwards to the state level since they are a governmental board

responsible to fulfill national conservation policies. But they are also accountable downwards to the

municipal council that has appointed them and the constituents in the local community. As a result

accountability becomes complex. The size of the conservation boards varies considerably; from five

members in Ytre Hvaler National Park representing two municipalities and one county to 14

members in SVR from 11 municipalities and three different counties.

As an important aim with the reform is better inclusion of local stakeholders and user groups, the

conservation boards are required to establish an advisory group of stakeholders in each area and it is

mandatory to hold an annual meeting. This implies that it is to a large extent up to the conservation

boards to define the advisory group’s role by deciding who the relevant stakeholders are, how they

should be included in the management and what kind of forum the advisory group should be. To

secure comprehensive management and coordination between the conservation areas and the

affected municipalities an administrative contact group with municipal executives has also been

established. The final aspect of the reform is employment of conservation managers. Between one

and three conservation mangers, depending on the size of the conservation area and how many

areas a conservation board is responsible for, are given the daily responsibility to manage the areas.

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When the county governors were responsible for the management often only one employee had

responsibility for several areas. The establishment of conservation managers is a new labour

segment within the natural management system, while at the same time reflecting a new emphasis

on management of protected areas. The conservation managers are formally employed by the

County governor, but reports to the conservation board. As a consequence the reform has been

criticized for ambiguous employment conditions and questions regarding the conservation manager’s

loyalty and accountability towards the board or the County governor have been raised.

Even though the reform has transferred management responsibility from regional state level to local

boards, the government (The Norwegian Environmental Protection Agency and County governor) still

have several opportunities to make formal objections to decisions made by the boards, and the

funding is still under central state control. These control mechanisms reflects the complex interplay

between different government levels within nature conservation management that still exists after

the reform.

4. Method:

This paper is based on a combination of methods, where semi-structured interviews, document

analysis and a survey covering 20 large conservation areas in the mid and southern parts of Norway

(see figure 1). Web-based surveys were sent to four different groups; politicians in the conservation

boards, members of the advisory groups, members of the administrative contact groups and

conservation managers. This paper reports findings from the two first surveys. The response rate for

the conservation board survey is 52 percent (63 of 121), the preliminary response rate for the

advisory group is 52 percent (53 of 104). The survey to the advisory group is not closed, as several

more protected areas are included in currently running version of the survey. The surveys reported

here were conducted between February and March 2014. Variable operationalization and our

empirical model will be presented in the section on findings.

A lot of research in this field is based on single case studies, with some exceptions (see Zachrisson

2008). By contrast our approach enables us to compare experiences across the different

conservation areas and collaborative networks. We combine the survey results with semi-structured

interviews in two conservation areas; Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella National park and Setesdal-Vesthei-

Ryfylkeheiane Landscape Protection Park. Both of these conservation areas were part of the trial

period that today’s management model is based on (Falleth & Hovik 2008) Approximately 20

interviews were conducted with the different groups; four local politicians in the conservation board,

six members of the advisory group, six municipal officials, one representative for the county

governor and four conservation managers. These interviews were conducted during spring 2013, and

formed a basis for the survey that was sent to the target groups of all the conservation areas.

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Figure 1: Large conservation areas in Norway with local management boards. The survey was sent to

the management boards responsible for National Parks and Landscape Protected Areas within the

red square, in total 20 boards. In addition, the two case areas where interviews were conducted are

marked.

Large Conservation Areas in Norway

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5. Findings

This section presents findings from both the survey and the interviews with different actors in the

two case areas. At this stage it is primarily the survey data that have been analyzed and the interview

material is only to a limited degree introduced in this section.

5.1 Mobilization in rural collaborative governance

When studying mobilization of local actors in nature conservation management, we distinguish

between three channels, the channel of representative democracy, pattern of contact and

participatory democracy. In the following we present our findings regarding actor mobilization

through each of these channels.

Mobilization of the representative democratic channel

Mobilization of the representative democratic channel will, we believe, imply that matters

concerning the management of the national park or protected area are topics of interest for the

political representatives. In the survey to the board members, we asked to what extent they inform

the council beforehand and after the board meetings, and whether they discuss matters with their

council colleges.

Figure 1: Percent conservation board members that always or sometimes do (N=62)

Approximately half of the board members report that they regularly get signals from the council

before the board decides on matters of importance for the municipality or county. Only 40% do

regularly report to the council from discussions and decisions in the board. Even fewer, only 24

percent, discuss matters with colleges in the council. These findings indicate that the mobilization of

the local and regional councils in the management of protected areas is modest. (However probably

not much different from the councils’ involvement in inter-municipal cooperation on other

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

recieve signals from the council

discuss matter with other councl members

reports from board meeting to the council

recieve signals from the councildiscuss matter with other

councl membersreports from board meeting to

the council

Series 1 52 24 40

Series 1

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matters).That contact between board members and local and regional councils only happens

occasionally was also reflected in our interview with board members in the two case areas.

Based on the reported interaction board members have with local and regional councils and other

politicians, the board members’ assessment of the political anchorage of the conservation

management at local and regional level is rather surprising.

Figure 2: Board members and stakeholder group members’ assessment regarding sufficient political

anchorage at municipal and county level. Percent partly or completely agreeing that the anchorage is

sufficient (N=62-63/50)

Figure 2 shows that the board members are much more positive than the stakeholders in their

assessments of the political anchorage. On the one hand, one could expect the board members do

know best, since they are members of the local or regional councils. On the other hand, the board

members assess their own success in anchoring, which could result in bias. To only seldom inform

and discuss conservation management with their council colleges does hardly match with a sufficient

anchorage, if a sufficient anchorage imply an active and informed council. The national park

managers do, however, agree with the board members. In their opinion, the conservation

management is sufficiently politically anchored. The members of the administrative contact group

distinguish between local and regional level, as 60 percent agree that the work is sufficiently

anchored at municipal level, but only 21 percent agree that it is so at county level.

Mobilization through patterns of contact

Contacting board members directly, or through other council members, is one way for local

stakeholders to influence conservation management. We have mapped the frequency of contact

between elected politicians and stakeholder groups as reported by both the board members and the

stakeholder group members. Thus, we do not only map contact that was meant to influence

decisions or contact initialized by stakeholders. We believe that any contact, whatever purpose, is an

opportunity to influence. Furthermore, it is difficult for the respondents to distinguish between the

frequency of contact initiated by themselves or the other part.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

At municipal level

At county level

At municipal level At county level

Stakeholder group members 50 46

Board members 78 63

Stakeholder group members Board members

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Figure 3: Board members’ contact with interests groups. Percentage N=59-61

A majority of the board members have some contact with all three interests groups. Only a few,

however, have frequent contact. The board members report to be more frequently in contact with

land owner and other right holders than the other two interests groups, but the difference is minor.

Around 30 percent report that they never have been in contact with representatives of local industry

or environmental NGOs, 20 percent report to never be in contact with land owners or other right

holders.

Figure 4 shows the stakeholder group members reported contact with NP-board members and

members of local or regional councils. Here we have distinguished between stakeholders

representing public government, local industry and NGOs.

Figure 4: Stakeholder groups’ contact with conservation board members and council members.

Percentage. N=59-61/ 49

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Land owner and other right holders

Industry

NGOs

Land owner andother right holders

Industry NGOs

once a month or more 13 8 7

Less frequent 65 61 61

Never 20 28 31

once a month or more Less frequent Never

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In figure 4, local industry includes land owners (farmers and forest owners). Stakeholder group

members representing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have less frequent contact with

politicians than stakeholder group members representing local industry and public government. 4

out of 10 NGO-representatives have never been in contact with council members. The lobby channel

seems to be more important for governmental actors and local industry, than civil society

organizations.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

public government

Local industry

NGOs

public government Local industry NGOs

once a moth or more frequent 8 18 0

Less frequent 75 59 85

Never 0 24 15

Contact with boare members

once a moth or more frequent Less frequent Never

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Public government

Local industry

NGOs

Public government Local industry NGOs

once a moth or more frequent 0 22 0

Less frequent 75 56 53

Never 17 22 42

Members of local or regional councils

once a moth or more frequent Less frequent Never

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Mobilization through the participatory channel of advisory group

As already mentioned, the conservation boards are required to establish an advisory group of

stakeholders in each area. That the advisory groups differ in size, function and stakeholder

represented is clearly reflected in our two cases. The advisory group in Setesdal Vesthei,

Ryfylkeheiane and Frafjordheiane (SVR) has six members: four from private businesses (or right

holders), three representing public government and only one NGO-representative. Three of the

members represent respectively all of the land owners, mountain boards and electricity companies in

the conservation area. In Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella the advisory group consists of no less than 37

members. Apart from a larger advisory group representing a diversity of interests, they have not

chosen representation through one member. Seven mountain boards, three electricity producers, 20

land owner associations and eight farmer’s associations are represented in the advisory group. In

addition five regional tourism organizations are represented. Another difference is the inclusion of

NGOs in the advisory group. While a regional branch of the Norwegian Trekking Association is the

only NGO representative in the advisory board in SVR, the advisory board in Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella

has four environmental-NGOs in addition to three regional branches of the same trekking association

as in SVR.

At the time we did interviews in Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella (January 2013) there had not been any

meetings in the advisory group, even though the National Park board was one of the first appointed

by the Ministry of Environment in November 2010. However, there were plans to gather all the

stakeholders to a workshop later that spring. In SVR the advisory board met half a year after the

board was established in March 2012 and have had regularly meeting since this. In common for the

two areas is a more informal use of the advisory group. In specific issues the conservation managers

in both areas contact stakeholders directly both by telephone and e-mail. Our impression is that this

contact is largely based on the conservation manager’s need to obtain information about the area

when preparing issues for the board.

We have mapped the board members and the stakeholder group members’ assessment of the role of

the stakeholder group. In figure 5 we have split the stakeholders into three sub-groups, representing

public government, local industry or NGOs.

Figure 5: NP-board members and stakeholder group members’ assessment of the role of the advisory

stakeholder group in the management of the protected area (Percent that answer that the

stakeholder plays this role to a large or quite large degree (4 or 5 on a five-point scale). N=61-62/49-

50)

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Figure 5 shows some interesting results. The board members assessment of the function and activity

of the stakeholder groups are much more positive than the assessment from the group members.

Here we should remember that our survey so far comprises only nine stakeholder groups, which can

cause a bias. Another interesting trend is that the public stakeholders tend to assess the stakeholder

group more positive than the other interest groups. This is particularly true for the role as channel of

communicating opinions and views from the stakeholders to the board, and an arena for creating

mutual understanding among the different stakeholder groups. Representatives from the local

industry tend to be most critical, but as the number of respondents is low, one should not lay any

emphasis on small differences.

We did also ask the respondents to give a general assessment of the stakeholder group. The question

to the board members was stated different from the questions to the stakeholder group members.

25 percent of the board members do partly or completely agree on a statement that the

“stakeholder group is seldom (little) involved in the management of the protected area”, while 34

percent did partly or completely disagree in this statement. The response indicates some variation in

the board members’ assessment. The members of the stakeholder groups are less positive, as shown

in figure 6.

Figure 6: Stakeholder group members’ general assessment of the stakeholder groups (Percent that

answer that the statement describes the role of the stakeholder group to a large or quite large

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

a channel of information from theboard to user groups / stakeholders

to gain knowledge from local users

to promote opinions and views fromlocal users

create understanding for the interstsand opinipns of other users

to create interst in participating inthe management of the area

to hinder conflicts and coordinateinterests

NGO

Local industry

Public government

Board members

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degree (4 or 5 on a five-point scale). N=50 )

The stakeholder group members representing public government are also more positive regarding

the more general aspects of the stakeholder group, than the other stakeholders. However, no more

that 42 percent agree with a statement that the opinions and suggestions from the stakeholder

groups is seriously considered by the NP-board and the share among the other two stakeholder

groups are even lower. Quite a few of the stakeholder group members find the purpose or role of the

group to be unclear or ambiguous. Here the NGO-representatives are most critical. The

representatives of public government tend to disagree in the statement, while the industry-

representatives’ opinion varies across all response alternatives.

Our findings indicate that the stakeholder groups’ roles are fitting the need of the public government

stakeholders far better than local industry and NGOs. Furthermore, there is a great discrepancy

between the board members assessment of the role of the stakeholder group and the members of

the stakeholder groups themselves, particularly the ones representing private sector and civil society.

The implications of this finding, we will return to in the discussion.

5.2 Analysis of the effects of mobilization on outcome.

There are several aims behind the management reform. One important aim for the national

government was to increase local community members’ accept for protection of the area. Another

central aim was to achieve a more comprehensive management perspective, through a better

balance between protection and sustainable use of the area and by coordinating the management of

the areas surrounding the National Parks and the management within the parks. These are two aims

which arguably could be promoted by local mobilization. One central argument behind the idea of

participatory democracy is that participation and involvement will increase the participants’

understanding and acceptance of the public policy. This will increase the legitimacy of the public

policy (Pateman 1970). Active involvement from the elected politicians which are directly

accountable to the members of the local community, can also improve the legitimacy of the

conservation. Participation from different stakeholders, local politicians and administrators will lead

to a diversity of inputs to the management, reflecting different interests, values, perspectives and

experiences with the area, which arguably will improve the capacity for comprehensive

management.

Variable operationalization and empirical model

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

The board consider seriously theopinion and suggestions from the

stakeholdergroup

The boards purpose with thestakeholder group is unclear

NGO

Local industry

Public government

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We have asked the members of the boards and the stakeholder groups to assess the outcome of the

management, by stating to what extent they agree on several statements (on a five point scale), one

of them being: “Local management has contributed to greater accept for the protection among local

population”. We us this question as an indicator for the actors’ perception of local accept.

We also asked the respondent if they agree or disagree with the following two statements: “Local

management contributes to a good balance between use and protection” and “Local management

contributes to an integrated approach to land use management of the protected area and the

surrounding areas”. The mean score on these two questions is our indicator of the actors’ perception

of comprehensiveness in the management of the area.

In order to test how local mobilization influences such outcomes, we have constructed three index

variables measuring political anchorage, pattern of contact and stakeholder mobilization. Political

anchorage is the mean score of the respondents’ answers to the questions whether the management

of the area is sufficiently politically anchored at local and regional level respectively (see figure 2).

Contact frequency is measured as the respondents’ mean score on contact with each other:

Politicians’ contact with interest groups and stakeholder group members’ contact with board

members and members of local or regional councils (see figure 3 and 4). Stakeholder mobilization is

the mean score of the respondents’ assessment of the stakeholder groups’ contribution to the

management of the area (see figure 5).

Since our indicators of both management outcome and mobilization are perceptual measures, we

will include variables describing the individual characteristics of the respondents as control variables.

We use gender and education. We also include actors’ affiliation as a control variable, since we know

that perception of local mobilization varies across affiliation. We include a set of dummies

distinguishing between board members and the following three stakeholder groups: public

government, industry and NGOs.

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Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the variables in our model (mean, standard deviation, mean and

max) (N=80/77).

Mean Std.dev Min Max

Increased local acceptance

3,62 1,03 1 5

More comprehensive management

4,00 1,04 1 5

Political anchorage

3,50 1,04 1 5

Pattern of contact 2,35 0,90 1 5

Stakeholder mobilization

3,59 0,81 1 5

Female 0,41 0,50 0 1

Education level 3,14 0,91 1 4

Affiliation: Board member

Public government

0,11 0,32 0 1

Industry 0,15 0,36 0 1

NGO 0,19 0,39 0 1

Findings

How political mobilization affects governance outcomes is analyzed through an OLS-regression. Table

2 presents the results for both the outcome regarding local acceptance and regarding comprehensive

management. First we have tested a model including only the variables measuring political

mobilization, then a comprehensive model including our control-variables.

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Table 2: Perceived increased local acceptance and comprehensiveness as a function of local

mobilization. (OLS-regression, slope and standard errors) (Board members are the reference group)

Increased local acceptance Increased comprehensive management

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Reference group (board members)

1,85* (0,70)

1,98* (0,91)

1,12 (0,66)

1,82* (0,84)

Political anchorage

0,17 (0,11)

0,17 (0,12)

0,15 (0,11)

0,14 (0,11)

Pattern of contact 0,24 (0,13)

0,22 (0,13)

0,29* (0,12)

0,26* (0,12)

Stakeholder mobilization

0,17 (0,14)

0,18 (0,17)

0,47** (0,13)

0,35* (0,15)

Female 0,20 (0,26)

0,24 (0,23)

Education -0,08 (0,14)

-0,03 (0,12)

Public government

0,29 (0,40)

-0,12 (o,35)

Industry 0,25 (0,38)

-0,10 (0,34)

NGO -0,18 (0,35)

-0,69* (0,32)

Adj R square 0,05 0,03 0,18 0,21

*p<0,05. ** p<0,01

Rather surprisingly, political mobilization hardly influence local acceptance. There is a positive

relation between contact frequency and perceived local acceptance, but the relation is not statistical

significant at a 5 percent level. Even though the perception of local acceptance varies a lot (see table

1), our independent variables do not contribute much to explain this variation. We had expected a

rather strong relation between perceived level of political anchorage and assessment of the role of

the stakeholder group on one hand, and perceived increased accept for nature conservation on the

other hand. It is also rather surprising that affiliation do not affect perceived increased acceptance of

the protection.

We are, however, able to explain quite a bit of the variation in perceived increased

comprehensiveness. Both pattern of contact and an active stakeholder group affect

comprehensiveness. Political anchorage has only a minor influence. Actors having a frequent and

broad contact with other actor types tend to report more success regarding comprehensive

management, and actors reporting a more important role for the stakeholder group, also tend to

report more successful comprehensive management. This can be interpreted as an indication of a

positive relation between input from a diversity of actors and outcome in form of

comprehensiveness. As the areas surrounding the protected areas are managed by the local councils

in accordance with the Planning and Building Act, it is rather surprising that political anchorage is not

associated with comprehensive management.

18

The stakeholder group members do assess the outcome of comprehensive management as less

successful than the board members, with the NGO-representatives being the far most negative. They

see far less results regarding improved comprehensiveness, than the board members.

6. Discussion:

Since the analysis of the survey date is at a preliminary stage, we only imply points for further

discussion in this section.

Simple frequencies in our results show that there is a discrepancy between the board members’ and

the stakeholder group members’ assessment of sufficient political anchoring, the stakeholder groups’

role and general assessments of the stakeholder groups’ involvement in management of the

protected areas. While the politicians to a large extent regard the management sufficient locally and

regionally political anchored, members of stakeholder groups disagree. It is not surprising that the

board members have a higher assessment of democratic anchoring, since this is self-assessing their

own role. Nor is it surprising that members of the stakeholder groups disagree with the board

members since they have less insight into how the board members interact with both the political

level and other stakeholder groups.

While we expected a lower assessment of the democratic anchoring at the county level than at the

municipal level, we did not expect to find such a sharp divergence between mobilizations through

the representative democratic channel and assessment of sufficient democratic anchoring. The lower

assessment of democratic anchoring at the county level can be understood partly on the basis that

nature conservation is not traditionally an area of responsibility for the counties. Moreover, the

boards’ majority consists of local politicians, and nature conservation affects the municipality more

than the county as a whole. At the same time, some of the typical mountain counties in the inland

have several large conservation areas, and one could expect that these issues would be higher on the

political agenda at the regional level than in other counties less affected by national conservation

policies.

An important argument in the debate about whether the government or the local municipalities

should manage large conservation areas before the reform was the need to increase the legitimacy in

the nature conservation. Local democratic anchoring through representation from locally elected

politicians accountable to the local communities was emphasized. However, our findings shows a

striking contrast between the board members’ own assessment of the political anchoring of the

management system and their contact with local and regional councils as well as other politicians.

While almost 80 % of the board members partly or completely agreed that the political anchoring at

the local level is sufficient, only 24 % stated that they discuss matters with colleagues in the councils

on a regular basis. This implies that the interaction between board members and other local and

regional politicians is modest. On the one hand this could imply that decision making in the

conservation board is less controversial and more formalistic, giving dispensations for snowmobiles

and other minor issues for instance, and not regarded as relevant for the broad local political

context. The fact that the management model and the conservation boards are so new, we would on

the other hand have expected more interaction and active engagement with the local and regional

councils. Since there has been a political struggle to get the management responsibility transferred

to the local level and ongoing debates about the results of local management, one could have

expected a higher interaction level. On the other hand, one can certainly ask how this picture is

19

different from other inter-municipal boards where one representative meets on behalf of the entire

municipality (Further develop this with inclusion of experiences from inter-municipal collaboration

and democratic anchoring based on Dag Ingvar Jacobsen (forthcoming summer 2014)).

This raises questions about democratic anchoring through political participation. Can one political

representative, either local or regional, ensure democratic anchoring on his or her own of

conservation management without active engagement with the broader local or regional level? Does

the local management model replace a system dominated by technocratic elites to a system

dominated by political elites, rather than toward a system for broad mobilization of local actors? Our

further discussion will address these questions.

When combining the low mobilization of the representative democratic channel with the reported

contact between the board members and stakeholder group members (few frequently in contact),

democratic anchoring through the participatory channel and stakeholder involvement becomes vital.

However, as our results indicate the advisory group is to a large extent fitting the need of the public

government instead of local industry and NGOs. This raises the question, to what extent is the

channel that is supposed to ensure stakeholder participation in the local management model first

and foremost becoming an arena for coordination between different governmental agencies in a

highly fragmented policy field.

Further discussion points:

- Board members are in general more positive to the advisory groups, but when asked to

assess the groups’ general involvement in the management we see more variation = could

this better reflect the situation?

- The stakeholder group as an area for coordination between different branches of PUBLIC

government, rather than private actor and civil society involvement.

- Why political anchoring has so little influence on perceived outcomes: As Edelenbos et al.

(2010) findings indicated that political involvement to a lesser degree was important for the

output than stakeholder inclusion, our findings point in a similar direction. This opens up for

a discussion about whether these findings might have a more general interest.

- Why is comprehensive nature management more influenced by mobilization than local

acceptance?

7. Conclusion:

20

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