Wooden Triangles? Explaining Venue Participation in Different Types of Forest Policy Processes

Any type of policy process contains different venues where actors can meet, negotiate and influence the policy at stake. Actors’ participation depends on the specific policy context. We distinguish collaborative and hierarchical processes on the one hand, and conflictive and consensual processes on the other. We argue that the more hierarchical a process, the less actors are involved, but venue attendance is more constant. In contrast, collaborative processes include a broad variety of actors, and key actors participate only in selected, important venues. Highly conflictive processes are generally expected to increase the participation of actors, but participation shows a segregation along the main cleavages. Venues in consensual processes are expected to show a less biased composition but with fewer participants. The expectations are examined in an empirical study of Swiss forest policy from 2000 to 2012. The relations between actors and venues are analyzed with two-mode Exponential Random Graph Models.