Legitimacy of forest policy – concept analysis and empirical applications in Finland

Abstract

This study analyzes the political legitimacy of forest and forest-related nature conservation policies in Finland. Legitimacy is defined here that the forest and nature conservation regimes and related political institutions are perceived as rightful among the people. The major contribution of this study is the comprehensive conceptual framework of legitimacy based on several theories, mainly from political science. The framework analyzes the objects of support, patterns of legitimacy, performance evaluations, and how these relate to one another. In this study, the objects of support refer to forest-related political institutions; these include regulations and public incentives, as well as decisionmaking processes, political programs, and administrative procedures. The framework is intended to be especially useful in the empirical analyses of pluralistic public political discussion and uses a methodology developed for this purpose. The study also analyses the social values of organized political actors. The empirical part of this study explores a data set from Finnish print media discourse, based on letters to editors in three newspapers and in one journal, along with comments given during the preparation of Finland's National Forest Programme 2010. Another empirical data set consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews and the writings of the organized interest groups. Many different groups of citizens were found to participate in public discussion on forests. Quite a large number of individuals shared the overall publicity, despite the fact that there were some very active writers. Nature conservation organizations, researchers, and politicians were well represented. However, the participation of governmental officials from both the forest and environmental sectors can be characterized as insufficient, considering their importance in the implementation of policies. The study of letters to editors found that groups of common social values served as patterns of legitimacy in the performance evaluations of forest policies. These include welfare and wellbeing derived from forests; values related to nature conservation; democratic values; distributive justice; good governance; core regime principles; and fair markets. Of all performance evaluations, 52% were negative while 26% were positive and 22 % were mixed. The welfare of citizens and the nation, export incomes and employment were the most common justifications used in the legitimacy evaluations while economic growth was a topic that divided opinions. Principles related to values of nature and sustainable development were almost as common in the data. A common argument related to the wellbeing of future generations combined the ideas of benefits and nature values with the idea of distributive justice. Democratic values, especially the public participation of the involved groups of people and public deliberation were common sources of legitimacy. Most political actors supported the ideal of conciliatory decision-making, while smaller group preferred strictness and non-compromising political action. Private property rights and the so-called everyman's right were found to be strong supporting arguments. In addition to the recognition of private ownership of forests, they were on the other hand perceived as national heritage. The perceived fairness of the distribution of benefits and burdens was mostly based on comparisons between people or