Bringing Society Back In: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities.

By Edward P. Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 336p. $67.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

This book is admirable at several levels. It offers environmentalists some measure of reassurance that participatory politics can achieve ecologically rational outcomes. It adds to the body of evidence that deliberative democrats can use to argue that their theoretical insights have the potential for practical application. And it reminds those of us who teach classes in political inquiry how valuable a well-executed comparative case study can be. In fact, this solidly researched and well-written book by Edward Weber can be the subject of serious criticism only for failing to do what it never intended to do. First, however, it is only fair to acknowledge the author's success in achieving his stated aims.

Weber offers a richly descriptive account of three grassroots environmental management (GREM) efforts in three environmentally sensitive communities—the Henry's Fork Watershed Council in Idaho's Snake River Valley, the Applegate Partnership in southwestern Oregon, and the Willapa Alliance at the mouth of Washington State's Columbia River. These three cases share several things in common. First, each of these communities had been the site of a protracted standoff between development interests and environmentalists over seemingly irreconcilable values. Second, the opposing forces in each community were able to recognize that they were trapped in their own positions by what amounted to a mutual veto power. Finally, each of these cases describes “outside the box” policy responses that have generally been recognized as successful innovations in political coalition building at the regional level.

The historical accounts of these GREM experiments would be of sufficient value by themselves to justify our attention. But Weber has provided something more valuable still. His analysis demonstrates that decentralized, collaborative, and participatory governance arrangements can produce approaches to natural resource preservation that are both environmentally sensible and philosophically defensible. He achieves this by focusing his discussion of GREM on the concept of democratic accountability.

Weber defines accountability as “the control of behavior and the existence of an authority relationship between those being held to account and the entity or entities making sure accountability exists” (pp. 11–12). He observes that the conventional wisdom about accountability describes it as a one-way street, a relationship of subservience between superior and subordinate. This view of accountability is clearly ill suited to a process of policy formation carried out in a decentralized arena by actors who are almost exclusively private citizens rather than public officials. Yet some theory of accountability is necessary if those who wield the coercive power of government are to be expected to enforce the results produced by GREM. As Weber observes, accountability must be demonstrated “across the existing levels of government” (p. 101). So he goes beyond merely describing three successful experiences with GREM to provide a new conception of democratic accountability that is better suited to broadly participatory decision making outside the conventional boundaries of government. He characterizes this alternate form of accountability as 360 degree accountability.

As the name implies, 360 degree accountability is multidirectional. It implies “a compact of mutual, collective responsibility, wherein participating individuals are accountable to everyone else” for the quality of policy outcomes (p. 87). The effectiveness of this form of accountability can be assessed by examining 1) the diversity of representation in producing outcomes; 2) the benefits accruing to the broad range of interests represented by participants in the process; 3) the specific effects of outcomes on individuals and groups within the community; and 4) the relationship of outcomes to existing laws, regulations, and programs. Clearly, policy outcomes that succeed in these ways are more likely to be accepted at the local level by those with the ability to forestall effective action. And outcomes meeting these criteria are far more likely to enjoy the support of those in government who are authorized to see that agreements reached in deliberation are carried out in fact. By deploying this evaluative framework in his discussion of the three cases presented, Weber makes a strong argument for both the political and ecological viability of decentralized, collaborative, and participatory governance.

This theoretical construct for evaluating GREM, as well as other forms of participatory and community-based decision making, is the “value-added” element of Bringing Society Back In that takes the book beyond its primary arena of discourse in public policy and administration. Democratic theorists, and deliberative democrats in particular, will find Weber's analysis both intriguing and useful. They will, however, notice a hole that needs to be filled. And so we come to the unfair criticism that Weber has failed to do something he never intended to do in the first place.

As important as democratic accountability is to the future of grassroots deliberative democracy, another consideration is equally important. These decentralized and largely nongovernmental arrangements face the challenge of legitimacy as surely as they face the challenge of accountability. To borrow a distinction from Jürgen Habermas, policy pronouncements are important both as facts and as norms. Systems of accountability, to the extent that they ensure coercive enforcement of policy outcomes, create for citizens a “fact” in that there is a new rule in their political world that they must take into account. But that fact, by itself, does not constitute a norm. It does not require citizens to acknowledge the “rightness” of the rule, only its reality. And as most environmentalists would be quick to point out, protecting the environment is as much (or more) about changing attitudes as it is about enforcing rules.

Now this is not to say that Bringing Society Back In hits a conceptual wall when it comes to the question of legitimacy. Accountability and legitimacy are clearly related concepts, and one can readily imagine the general contours of an argument leading from the former to the latter. The issue is merely beyond the scope of this thoroughly admirable book. It falls to others in the communities of environmental policy and democratic theory to explore this question, building upon the foundation that Edward Weber has so thoughtfully provided.