In 1996, we published the book Dealing with an Angry Public. In it we raised concerns about the distrustful attitudes that citizens have toward government and corporations, and the inability of these institutions to respond to public concerns in a robust, inclusive, and effective way. We put forward six principles that might help win back the public’s trust. We expected that leaders and organizations that adopted these principles would be better off.

This article examines the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (AMP) in the United States, and other CAM efforts, to illustrate why and how procedural shortcomings may lead to natural resource management failures and reflect on how they may be overcome.

In the practice stories and commentaries that follow, good practice leads and inspires good theory. We will read about transportation planning and environmental management, about community involvement and multi-stakeholder negotiations, and throughout about deftly bringing technical expertise into play to inform creative proposals while working within specified budget constraints. We will read about early and even virtual negotiations among building users to inform architects' design choices and their more or less productive professional roles too. And there's much more

Cities, particularly those in coastal areas around the world, need to pay close attention to the risks posed by global warming and climate change. These risks are substantial, and the costs of not taking them into account are likely to be enormous. Planners should take the lead in preparing climate mitigation and adaptation plans, although these need to be approached somewhat differently from other planning assignments. Adaptation planning, in particular, should be viewed as a collective risk management task. As such, new tools for collaboration such as scenario planning, joint fact-finding and the use of role-play simulations to build public support in the face of high levels of uncertainty and complexity might be helpful.

State officials in Maryland realize that efforts to adapt to climate change require local support. They also understand that the uncertainty and complexity surrounding climate change make it hard for localities to reach agreement on what to do. Larry Susskind and Evan Paul of MIT worked with state officials to design a role-play simulation—that other states can now use— to help local leaders figure out how to manage climate change risks.

Negotiation analysts have increasingly focused on the internal decision-making dynamics in the minds of the parties. They ought to give more attention to the ways in which meaning is jointly constituted through sequences of verbal and nonverbal exchanges. The tools of conversation analysis (CA) and discourse analysis (DA) can be helpful in this regard.

Negotiation depends on communication. Whatever else goes on during a negotiation, parties attempt to manage their differences and reach agreements through exchanges of messages that make up sequences of moves and countermoves. Complementing language use, negotiation interaction is unavoidably situated within physical and social environments that can function as resources for negotiators: location (institutional, architectural), embodiment (posture, gesture, laughter, eye gaze), modes of communication (documents, symbol systems, telephones, e-mails), and social relationships. Furthermore, even the “mental” elements of negotiation (goals, planning and strategizing, emotional reactions, evaluating outcomes, etc.) are communicatively constituted, made public, and mutually understood in and through interaction. More than simply representing and conveying information, communication is the means by which social actors create meanings, outcomes, identities, and relationships.

In a recent book entitled Planning with Complexity, Judith Innes and David Booher (2010) make the case for a new way of knowing and deciding that they call collaborative rationality, an approach to problem solving that puts a premium on face-to-face dialogue and multiparty negotiation. Collaborative rationality involves interactions among a great many people with different perspectives, drawing on multiple sources of information, who manage to reach agreement. To explain how such broad-based collaboration is possible, Innes and Booher draw on insights from the field of complexity science.

The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (AMP) has been identified as a model for natural resource management. We challenge that assertion, citing the lack of progress toward a long-term management plan for the dam, sustained extra-programmatic conflict, and a downriver ecology that is still in jeopardy, despite over ten years of meetings and an expensive research program. We have examined the primary and secondary sources available on the AMP’s design and operation in light of best practices identified in the literature on adaptive management and collaborative decision-making. We have identified six shortcomings: (1) an inadequate approach to identifying stakeholders; (2) a failure to provide clear goals and involve stakeholders in establishing the operating procedures that guide the collaborative process; (3) inappropriate use of professional neutrals and a failure to cultivate consensus; (4) a failure to establish and follow clear joint fact-finding procedures; (5) a failure to produce functional written agreements; and (6) a failure to manage the AMP adaptively and cultivate long-term problem-solving capacity.

Over the past twenty-five years, public dispute resolution has emerged as an important area of practice — linked, in part, to ongoing efforts to promote deliberative democracy.As the field has evolved, however, the market for public dispute mediators has shifted. It is already possible to glimpse the further shifts and the new intellectual challenges likely to face the public dispute resolution field over the next twenty-five years.

Imagine the following: a small city of about 30,000 must decide whether to allow construction of a controversial industrial facility. The plant will generate sorely needed jobs and tax revenue, but it might also pose serious environmental and public-health risks. Under normal circumstances, the city council would require the developer to undertake a set of technical studies that city departments would review before a permit could be granted. Then, the city government (including several elected and/or appointed boards) might hold a hearing, and ultimately vote on whether to approve the project. Along the way, there might be a lot of letters to the editor of the local newspaper and even a referendum. 

Over the past twenty-five years, public dispute resolution has emerged as an important area of practice — linked, in part, to ongoing efforts to promote deliberative democracy.As the field has evolved, however, the market for public dispute mediators has shifted. It is already possible to glimpse the further shifts and the new intellectual challenges likely to face the public dispute resolution field over the next twenty-five years.

Social psychologist Kurt Lewin famously said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Too often, unfortunately, negotiation scholars and practitioners cannot agree on the meaning of good. Some academics look down their noses at what they regard as the limited and anecdotal knowledge of practitioners, while some practitioners think ivory-tower intellectuals quibble about abstractions or conduct toy experiments instead of grappling with the complex challenges of the real world. Many theoreticians and practitioners hold less extreme stances, of course, and a theory–practice gap might be the product not just of disrespect but methodological disputes, specialized and inaccessible professional languages, institutional distance, simple ignorance, or lack of opportunities for cross-pollination.

Despite the huge media attention environmental treaties receive, the system of making and implementing them is barely functioning.

At a reception honoring his service as the chairman of the House Science Committee in November 2006, retiring Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) quipped that Washington “is a town where people say they are for science-based decisionmaking until the overwhelming scientific consensus leads to a politically inconvenient conclusion.”1 He added, “We should be guided by sound science. We shouldn’t have politics determining science.” While few in the scientific community or the public at large would disagree with this argument, a problem arises when parties involved in a dispute disagree on what science has found or on the very definition of “sound science.”

These remarks were prepared for and delivered at the Second Annual Fordham University School of Law Dispute Resolution Society Symposium on October 12, 2007. The Address discusses how democracy, public dispute resolution, and social justice fit together. The speaker opens with an example of a small city making a decision about a large industrial development project from the perspective of a traditional model and a consensus-oriented model. He then addresses three major problems with the first: (i) the majority rule problem; (ii) the representation problem; and (iii) the adversarial format problem. The speaker goes on to advocate for the consensusbuilding model, followed by a Question and Answer session.

Traditional approaches to resolving coastal resource management disputes in the United States often produce less-than-optimal outcomes. Nonadjudicatory approaches such as policy dialogues and mediation can be more effective. This article presents four case studies of such approaches that have proven successful in resolving coastal resource management disputes in Massachusetts, California, and Oregon. These approaches emphasize consensus-building, are based on face to face discussions between contending stakeholders, and include important roles for planners as negotiators and mediators. The article describes four barriers to more widespread use of less adversarial forms of dispute resolution and suggests ways of overcoming those barriers.