Steelman Toddi A, DuMond Melissa Elefante
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Environ Manage. 2009 Mar;43(3):396-410. doi: 10.1007/s00267-008-9264-6. Epub 2009 Jan 31.
In the United States, the common interest often is conceived as a by-product of the pluralist, interest-group-driven democratic process. Special interests dominate in many political arenas. Consequently, we have lost the language, vocabulary, and ability to talk about the common interest. The way to reverse this trend is to develop and practice with new tools that allow us to articulate what we mean by the common interest in specific contexts. In this article, we leveraged the literature on procedural, substantive, and pragmatic decision making to illustrate how they work together to demonstrate whether and how the common interest was served in three case studies of Healthy Forests Restoration Act implementation on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. In two of the cases we found that the common interest was mostly served, while in the third case it was not. Our results raise questions about the ability of procedural criteria or substantive criteria alone to determine effectiveness in decision making. When evaluated together they provide a more complete understanding of how the common interest is or is not served.
在美国，共同利益常常被视为多元主义、利益集团驱动的民主进程的副产品。特殊利益在许多政治舞台上占据主导地位。因此，我们已经失去了谈论共同利益的语言、词汇和能力。扭转这一趋势的方法是开发并运用新工具，使我们能够在特定背景下阐明我们所说的共同利益的含义。在本文中，我们利用了关于程序性、实质性和务实性决策的文献，以说明它们如何共同作用，在亚利桑那州阿帕奇-西特格里夫斯国家森林实施《健康森林恢复法案》的三个案例研究中，展示共同利益是否以及如何得到体现。在其中两个案例中，我们发现共同利益大多得到了体现，而在第三个案例中则没有。我们的结果引发了对于仅靠程序性标准或实质性标准来确定决策有效性的能力的质疑。当将它们放在一起评估时，能更全面地理解共同利益是如何得到或未得到体现的。
