Legitimation processes in environmental dispute resolution: A case study

Thesis/Dissertation · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1992

OSTI ID:5674861

Lach, D H

Expense, limited access, delay, and hesitancy to get involved in substantive decisions hamper the legal system's effectiveness in creating stable environmental dispute settlements. Parties involved in environmental disputes increasingly turn to alternative forums of dispute resolution. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) includes mediation, arbitration, negotiation, and a growing number of hybrids such as regulated negotiation (reg-neg). While ADR offers disputants considerable flexibility in developing solutions, it does not provide the public any assurances that decisions about public resources made in ADR forums are fair or legitimate. This study examines how environmental dispute resolution participants construct legitimacy for the decisions they make in ADR forums. The author has developed a case study of the 1989 Oregon Timber Summit. Data sources included a complete Summit transcript, eleven in-depth interviews with participants, and 166 newspaper articles related to the Summit. To sort and analyze these textual data, a discourse analysis technique was used. The results suggest that (1) procedural and distributive justice issues influence participants' behavior even in the absence of dispute professionals, and (2) the structure of environmental dispute resolution provides disputants with ways to resist possible manipulation and exploitation by other participants.

• Research Organization: Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
• OSTI ID: 5674861
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
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ARBITRATION
COOPERATION
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
EXPLOITATION
FORESTRY
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WOOD PRODUCTS INDUSTRY