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The article provides a history of public participation in the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service planning, policy making, and project implementation. The public participation began with the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act (MUSYA) of 1960, which compelled the agency to openly balance the conflicting interests of various recreational and commercial user groups. Because the MUSYA instructed the Forest Service to use the needs of the Americans to guide its management decisions, the law initiated a trend toward holding public agencies accountable to the interests of stakeholders. By 1971, the Forest Service launched an inventory of roadless areas incorporating the most extensive public involvement program; but not until Congress enacted the National Forest Management.

Examines the concept of evaluation criteria in public policymaking and implementation within consensus-seeking partnerships in the U.S. Problems involving the economy, regulation and threat to property rights; Range of partnership goals; Contribution of the overall evaluation.

This article evaluates three commonly used shortcuts for surveying multistakeholder resource management groups. Each shortcut had a significant impact on research results when tested in a survey administered to 48 watershed partnerships in California and Washington. Surveying only the coordinator led to a picture of the partnership that was more successful, trusting, and proenvironment. Surveying only a single stakeholder category (e.g., federal and state agencies) had a similar effect. Surveying only participants (and excluding knowledgeable observers of each group) resulted in higher estimates of the amount of disagreement among the stakeholders. Studies that fail to sample broadly may lead to an inaccurate or incomplete characterization of the success and dynamics of stakeholder partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]