This research pathway has to components. The first seeks to explain very different public policy responses to environmental problems in the forest sector. A key project within this approach is a historical analysis of environmental forest policy in the United States and Canada. This project seeks to understand why different countries and regions have developed distinct policy responses to pressure from civil society for increased environmental protection. Current undertaking is a comparison of British Columbia, Canada’s forest policy changes in the last thirty years to policy changes in the US Pacific Northwest (Washington State and Oregon). This approach draws heavily from the historical institutionalist approach within political science – examining how institutions in both jurisdictions have mediated and shaped environmental politics in these regions. Importantly, it finds that efforts to characterize a single US “environmental policy style” fail to capture environmental forest politics at the state level, where most of the regulation over private forestland occurs (Cashore 1997b).

The second component to this pathway is to understand the intersection of public policy and the emergence of private authority. What are the ways in which public and private instruments might act to produce efficient and effective outcomes? Is a basket approach of mixed instruments preferable to single instrument choice? If so, what mix works best? What are traditional public policy processes doing about forest and environmental management? Has the emergence of private authority affected these policy developments?

Publications and papers related to this pathway include:

1. Cashore and Howlett “Punctuating What Equilibrium? Institutional Rigidities and Thermostatic Properties in Pacific Northwest Forest Policy Dynamics” paper produced January 2004.
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2. Cashore, Auld, and Newsom Governing Through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-State Authority Recently released from Yale University Press (See above on forest certification)
   • www.governingthroughmarkets.com
   • press release (PDF file, 96k)
3. Cashore, Auld and Newsom, “Legitimizing Political Consumerism: The Case of Forest Certification in North America and Europe” 2004, Special issue of the Russian Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology. This is a reprint of our chapter in Politics, Products, and Markets. Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present edited by Micheletti, Andreas FØllesdal, and Dietlind Stolle. Transaction Press, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick
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4. Teeter, Larry, Cashore, and Zhang (Eds). Forest Policy for Private Forestry: Global and Regional Challenges CAB International, Oxon, UK 2002
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5. Cashore and Auld “British Columbia’s Environmental Forest Policy Record in Perspective”, Journal of Forestry December 2003.
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6. Cashore, Hoberg, Howlett, Rayner and Wilson. In Search of Sustainability: British Columbia Forest Policy in the 1990s University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver. 2001
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7. “Comparing Endangered Species Protection in Canada and the United States: What are the Lessons for Future Policy Development?” Forest Policy Center Internal Working paper, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University, AL. 2001
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8. Rayner, Howlett, Wilson, Cashore and Hoberg, “Privileging the Sub-Sector: Critical Sub Sectors and Sectoral Relationships in Forest Policy-Making” Journal of Forest Policy and Economics vol. 2, no. 3-4 (2001): 319-332.
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9. “Chapter 3: The US Pacific Northwest”, in Wilson et al., Forest Policy: International Case Studies (Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1999).
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10. Bernstein and Cashore “The International-Domestic Nexus: The Effects of International Trade and Environmental Politics on the Canadian Forest Sector” in Howlett (ed.), Canadian Forest Policy: Regimes, Policy Dynamics and Institutional Adaptations 2002. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
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11. “What Should Canada Do When the Softwood Lumber Agreement Expires?” Policy issue of the week for policy.ca, and on line policy web site. February 7, 2001.
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