The contribution of stakeholder involvement to policy making for sustainable development in National Parks

It is widely accepted that new governance structures are needed to support sustainable development, because of both the nature of the challenges faced, and the incapacity of existing modes of government to address them in a context of eroded legitimacy. A burgeoning range of participatory practices rests on an established orthodoxy that sustainable development requires increased public involvement in policy making. Alongside this, governance is increasingly characterised by partnership working with a wide range of stakeholders. However evidence suggests that radical policy ideas may be weakened rather than strengthened by deliberation, and there is as yet limited understanding of the effectiveness of different deliberative practices.

The aim of the research was to examine this problem by analysing and comparing the contribution of different forms of stakeholder representation and involvement to the capacity of planning authorities to make the difficult choices and trade-offs implicit in implementing sustainable development. This was achieved through analysis of transport policy making within the Peak District National Park which allowed comparison between the effectiveness of ‘old’ and ‘new’ deliberative processes.