Setting the Stage for Alternative Analyses and Negotiation

Product Type: Proceedings, Pages in

Year: 1998

Author(s): Lamb, B.L

Suggested Citation:
Lamb, B.L. 1998. Setting the Stage for Alternative Analyses and Negotiation. In: S. Blazkova, C. Stalnaker, and O. Novicky (eds.). Hydroecological Modelling: Research, Practice, Legislation and Decision-Making. Prague, Czech Republic: T.G. Masaryk Water Research Institute. p. 60-62.

Abstract

Making decisions on how to manage natural resources is as much an exercise in policy analysis as it is fishery biology, hydrology, wildlife management, or forestry. Conducting a policy analysis means helping decision-makers is a matter of balancing conflicting objectives, data limitations, and available time so that recommendations can lead to an appropriate course of action (Wildavsky 1979). Although balancing factors to produce recommendations can be an individual or group exercise, in the U.S. it is most often an interagency problem. In an interagency problem, behavior is conditioned by an organization's mission as expressed in authorizing statutes (Clarke and McCool 1996) and the positions that have been worked out in past inter-organizational negotiations (Ingram et al. 1984). Organizational representatives who possess a knowledge of the agency's position...