Getting out the Cut

Abstract

To what extent do national forest policy decisions reflect a balance between the interests of environmentalists and the timber industries? National forest policy making from 1960 through 1995 was analyzed using the advocacy coalition framework developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith. The authors found that forest policy shifted in a more ecologically sensitive direction beginning in the late 1980s. Changes were largely attributable to the ability of the environmental coalition to manipulate new information to influence key decision makers within Congress and to take advantage of more favorable decisional venues to overcome structural biases built into existing forest policy-making arrangements.