Final Report (all chapters)

considered in the process, identify the preferable alternatives from an environmental standpoint,
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and discuss the criteria used to make the final determination.
This seems an eminently rational and transparent way to structure a complex decisionmaking
process, one with ample opportunity for all interested and affected parties to be heard.
Yet the (somewhat naïve) hope that a broader process of public involvement would produce
strong public support for bureaucratic decisions rarely has materialized. A case in point is the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which in the late 1970s became a frequent target of
environmental groups’ discontent after NEPA provided a systematic opportunity to challenge the
Corps approach to waterway management. In a short time, the agency went from an organization
proud of its engineering accomplishments to a paralyzed bureaucracy incapable of meeting its
public mandate. 83
That broader public involvement produced more controversy is not entirely surprising given
the history of technocratic decision-making at many federal agencies. Public servants
traditionally have privileged technical expertise over processes of public consultation, in part
because of dominant professional norms, but also as a means to protect their power and
authority. By allowing the public to participate in a hitherto bureaucratic process of decisionmaking,
the cultural clash between administrative culture and pluralist impulses became visible.
Whereas agency representatives had traditionally emphasized and cultivated technical expertise,
representatives of interest groups and members of the general public espoused a pluralist view of
public policy, one in which every view is equally legitimate.
From a bureaucratic standpoint, public participation can be reduced to two basic steps: The
agency “informs” the public about its plans, and the public registers with the agency its
disagreement and discontent. To the extent that an agency relies on input provided by the public,
it does so to ensure that it has complied with its procedural requirements. An actual dialogue,
even in embryonic form, does not take place. On the one end, the agency deems the public
simply incapable of appreciating the technical complexities involved in preparing an EIS; on the
other, the public perceives the agency as incapable or unwilling to provide technical information
in a clear and transparent way.
Pluralism has profoundly affected not only how the general public and interest groups view
government bureaucracies, but also how public administrators interpret their mandate to involve
the public. In a sense, administrators unconsciously have absorbed the main tenets of public
choice theory – that citizens, like any other individuals in the political arena, are rational
individuals with fixed preferences exclusively interested in maximizing their private utility. In
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83
Paul J. Culhane, "NEPA's Impacts on Federal Agencies, Anticipated and Unanticipated," Environmental Law 20
(1990), p.691-93; Jonathan Poisner, "A Civic Republican Perspective on the National Environmental Policy
Act's Process for Citizen Participation," Environmental Law 26 (1996), p.68-75.
See 40 C.F.R. 1505.2(a)-(c) (1995).
Daniel A. Mazmanian and Jeanne Nienaber, Can Organizations Change? Environmental Protection, Citizen
Participation and the Corps of Engineers (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979).
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