The strategic use of science in regional policy-making forums often assumes collaborative interactions between stakeholders. However, other types of stakeholder interactions are possible. This paper uses the ecology of games to frame an investigation into stakeholder participation in the policy networks for regional climate change planning for South East Queensland, Australia. We tracked organisational participation in policy forums between 2008 and 2012. We then used a novel bipartite network theoretical approach to identify participation by different types of organisations across shared multiple forums, which we argue prefaces: cooperation, collaboration, support or advocacy. Network analysis was then combined with semi-structured interviews to access how scientific information was utilised across the regional network. Our results suggest that stakeholder interactions were predominately used to advocate for organisational agendas. Advocacy artificially narrows the scope of possible policy options and represents a biased, selective use of information. While advocacy is an important part of policy process, as a counter balance, explicit efforts are needed to recurrently expand the scope of policy options.
McAllister, RRJ; McCrea, R; Lubell, MN
Policy networks, stakeholder interactions and climate adaptation in the region of South East Queensland, Australia
Regional Environmental Change