BUILDING GREENWAY POLICIES WITHIN A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY FRAMEWORK

Institutional arrangements which promote collaborative policy outcomes are critical to greenway protection within a participatory democracy framework. An example of greenway protection at the local level where coordinated land use policy efforts are under way is investigated to d emonstrate how various kinds of existing cooperative arrangements betw een communities and governments may facilitate greenway protection. Pe rsonal interviews are conducted with three groups of greenway policy p articipants in the Tug Hill region of upstate New York. The objectives of this study are to (1) identify and describe available opportunitie s for collaboration, and (2) describe the implications of these opport unities in terms of their contribution to the development of greenway policies in a participatory democracy context. The case study findings show that opportunities for cooperative discourse are described by al l three groups as specific roles played by individuals, or as objects, occasions, processes, or organizations which encourage talk about pub lic issues among citizens and people representing different organizati ons. A large portion of the opportunities described by study participa nts are organizations which function as communication linkages, and to a lesser extent, roles assumed by individuals in the community or soc iety. Opportunities for discussion of public issues tend to be describ ed by the three groups in terms of two organizational attributes: auth ority level and degree of formality. Cooperative discourse occurs betw een study participants and five different levels of authority: federal , state, local, private, and citizen. Although each group can identify formal-impersonal linkages with most other levels of authority, a por tion of the study participants prefer to rely on informal-personal lin kages when discussing public issues with local governments and landown ers. Linkages described by study participants encourage either simple or complex forms of public deliberation, with the former being more co mmon. Simple forms are superficial communicative exchanges about publi c issues between citizens and private or public organizations. More co mplex forms are closely aligned with theoretical definitions of partic ipatory democracy, where policy participants come to a shared understa nding during the course of policy deliberation. The potential for buil ding greenway policies in a participatory democracy context by focusin g on local authority levels and informal-personal linkages among relev ant organizations is discussed.