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Public policymaking and implementation in the United States are increasingly handled through local, consensus-seeking partnerships involving most affected stakeholders. This paper formalizes the concept of a stakeholder partnership, and proposes techniques for using interviews, surveys, and documents to measure each of six evaluation criteria. Then the criteria are applied to 44 watershed partnerships in California and Washington. The data suggest that each criterion makes a unique contribution to the overall evaluation, and together the criteria reflect a range of partnership goals-both short-term and long-term, substantive and instrumental. Success takes time-frequently about 48 months to achieve major milestones, such as formal agreements and implementation of restoration, education, or monitoring projects. Stakeholders perceive that their partnerships have been most effective at addressing local problems and at addressing serious problems-not just uncontroversial issues, as previously hypothesized. On the other hand, they perceive that partnerships have occasionally aggravated problems involving the economy, regulation, and threats to property rights. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

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We examined the effects of protection from human activities and effects of tourist hunting on densities of 21 large mammal species in Tanzania. Aerial censuses revealed that mammal biomass per km2 was highest in National Parks. Densities of nine ungulate species were significantly higher in National Parks and Game Reserves than in areas that permitted settlement; these tended to be the larger species favoured by poachers. The presence of tourist hunters had little positive or negative impact on ungulate densities, even for sought‐after trophy species; limited ground censuses confirmed these results. Our analyses suggest that prohibition of human activity, backed up by on‐site enforcement, maintains ungulate populations at relatively high densities, and challenge the idea that enforcement is only effective when spending is high.

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In Tanzania, where tourist hunting is employed as a conservation tool for habitat protection, information on population sizes and hunting offtake was used to assess the impact of tourist hunting on mammal densities. In general, tourist hunting pressure was unrelated to local population sizes, but for most species, animals were removed at a level of less than 10% of the local population size, suggesting that over‐exploitation was unlikely. Eland, however, and perhaps small antelope, bushbuck, kudu and reedbuck were hunted at levels which may be unsustainable in the long term. Analyses also identified areas of Tanzania with high levels of tourist hunting pressure, showed that, in certain areas, species with small population sizes such as eland could be declining as a result of tourist hunting, and suggested that current levels of lion and leopard offtake are too high. These findings, although preliminary, allow recommendations to be put forward for changing hunting quotas for certain species in particular areas of Tanzania.

Models of policymaking by regulatory agencies need (1) to avoid focusing on a single causal factor, and (2) include analyses of the costs and efficacy of a variety of instruments—law, budgetary review, appointments, direct participation, evaluative studies—by which external actors can influence agency policy. The article proposes a conceptual framework focusing on advocacy coalitions—that is, actors from a variety of institutions who share a belief system—as a means of dealing with these considerations and as an alternative to the dominant institutional/organizational perspective for understanding policymaking by regulatory agencies.

(1) conclude that mangroves reduced the death toll from storm surge in the Orissa Super Cyclone. However, it is unclear from their analyses whether or not this effect occurs independently over and above that of other variables known to affect inundation by long-period waves, such as distance from the coast and topography (2). Further, Das and Vincent (1) are wrong to equate storm surges with windgenerated storm waves. Storm surges have a period of hours to days (3) and consequently behave more like the tide or a tsunami. An effect of vegetation has never been questioned (2). The drag of vegetation must reduce wave velocity to some degree. More important questions, however, are how much protection vegetation can provide and how this compares with other mitigating factors (2). The results suggest that mangroves offered little protection (1). The correlation coefficient (r ϭ Ϫ0.13) between mangrove width and village deaths suggests that mangroves explain less than 2% of the variation in deaths. Clearly, other factors were also important. The study site covers only the northern extreme of the area affected by the cyclone and only 254 of Ͼ10,000 deaths occurred here. When the total area is considered, there is clear aggregation of deaths, which were much higher closer to where the storm crossed the coast (Fig. 1). Presumably, village proximity to the storm center or other variables such as distance from the coast and height above sea level were more important than mangroves in determining deaths per village. Indeed, these last two variables are significant whenever included in the models. Why then the emphasis on mangroves when no formal methods of model selection were used (4)?Even accepting the results, do they indicate that mangroves can provide an effective shield against storm surges, as suggested by the Food and Agriculture Organization? Surgerelated deaths were recorded in villages Ͼ2 km inland (1), suggesting the vegetation barrier will need to be very wide in similar low-lying areas. Indeed, in areas where high ground occurs close to the coast, the effect of vegetation is unlikely to be detectable (2). Finally, is revegetation an economical option for disaster mitigation? The authors estimate an opportunity cost of $300,000 (US) for every hectare of mangrove not cleared for farming. In contrast, the cost of an early warning system is minimal, because the existing weather forecasting capacity was sufficient to issue a warning that saved Ϸ5 lives per village (1). We conclude that although mangroves may have reduced deaths in this event (1), the effect is likely to be small, particularly when compared to other variables. Furthermore, the cost of revegetation is high and the effectiveness of a mangrove barrier is low when compared to an early warning system. The value in conserving coastal forests is preventing occupation of the most dangerous areas, which are close to the coast in low-lying areas (5).