Assessing decision making and dispute resolution in environmental policy: Regulatory negotiations at the Environmental Protection Agency
This dissertation is an evaluation of the use of negotiations in the rule-making context at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The goal is to assess the benefits and the limitations of negotiation as a policy process, and to make explicit the values which are expected from a negotiation process as well as the conditions which must be met in order for those values to be realized. Three distinct values are expected of negotiation processes: (1) negotiation is promoted as an efficient process that can save time and money in public decision making by avoiding protracted and expensive legal actions; (2) it is expected that a negotiation process which provides a mechanism for reaching accommodation among all competing perspectives can yield good policy outcomes; face-to-face interactions among parties with competing interests should provide opportunities for building better relationships among individuals and also for building community. The usefulness of negotiation as a policy tool is limited by the fact that negotiation is only appropriate in a few select cases in which the issues are mature and the parties affected by the issues are prepared for negotiation.
- Research Organization:
- Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 7021483
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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