Making Bureaucrats Responsive: A Study of the Impact of Citizen Participation and Staff Recommendations on Regulatory Decision Making

Conventional wisdom tells us that participation in public hearings is often ineffective; and that part-time regulators rubber stamp the recommendations of their staffs. The implication of this conventional wisdom is that regulators listen to citizens, but take their signals from staff.' When this notion is coupled with the private sector cry for less regulation and less citizen participation, it is not surprising that there is a move to minimize both.2 What is surprising is that while the effectiveness of regulatory requirements has been studied and analyzed, there has been little systematic analysis of the effectiveness of citizen participation in regulatory proceedings.3 The few studies which have generated reliable data tend to focus on who participates, how many people participate, and why people participate. They monitor participation rather than measure its influence. Similarly, there is very little hard data on whether or not regulators rubber stamp staff recommendations.4 There are some case studies which suggest that they do, and one or two attempts to show that they do, but there is insufficient data to support a theory. Having served eight years as a commissioner on the California Coastal Commission, a state regulatory agency with far-reaching land use authority, I observed that citizens who participated in public hearings to influence the commission's voting behavior appeared to be effective, that is, they achieved their participation goals. I also observed that the commissioners tended to follow the recommendations of the staff in a selective fashion, i.e., when they recommended approval of permits, but not so when they recommended denial. In an attempt to determine whether or not my personal observations were accurate, I conducted a study of three regional California Coastal Commissions over a threeyear period. The purpose of the study was to ascertain in a quantitative manner whether or not citizens who participated in regulatory public hearings influenced