in the past. How had they behaved in similar situations? What powers did 

 each have, aside from those legal ones spe^. -Tied in the statute? What were 

 some of the likely outcomes? The answers to these quer .ions may well have led 

 the Department of Fisheries to choose a different str tegy than it did. Had 

 the interaction been scoped and defined differently, the Department of 

 Fisheries could have developed tactics to cope with a number of possibilities. 

 If the Department of Ecology had a history of backing down in direct conflicts 

 with the City of Seattle, perhaps a better move would have been to begin 

 communicating with the interested parties well before the public hearing. As 

 it was, the hearing came as a surprise to the City of Seattle.. From that 

 point forward, it seemed the City was out to defend itself vigorously from 

 what it viewed as an unprecedented attack on its water rights. 



And what about the original objective of the Department of Fisheries, to 

 "test the strength of the law" (Beckett and Lamb 1976)? It seems that this 

 objective was not wholly compatible with that agency's ultimate goal — long-term 

 protection of the fishery resources in the Cedar River system. Had the Depart- 

 ment of Fisheries defined the issue in less threatening terms (rather than 

 depicting it from the outset as the first of a long series of struggles with 

 consumptive users such as the City of Seattle), perhaps communication could 

 have been enhanced (Wilds and Lamb 1985). 



Inadequate preparation prior to participating in resource conflicts (such 

 as evidenced in this case study) has become a major obstacle to those working 

 on behalf of instream flow values today (White et al . 1980; Ingram et al . 

 1984). Indeed, in many cases, no attempt is made at all to examine and define 

 the dynamics of a resource problem prior to becoming involved in its resolu- 

 tion, in spite of an increased emphasis in the literature on the importance of 

 such a task (Ingram et al . 1984). 



Recent trends in resource policy literature suggest a number of ways in 

 which preparation for and participation in resource conflicts can be improved. 

 Some of these trends have included calls for more directly applicable policy 

 research (Schlesinger 1968; Rothman 1980; Cortner and Marsh 1986); more 

 politically astute actors on all fronts (Behn 1981; Alston 1983); increased 

 understanding and communication among the professions and disciplines involved 

 in instream flow and other resource conflicts (Alston 1983; Callaham 1984; 

 Haimes 1984); analyses that go beyond an examination of the economic factors 

 involved (Daneke and Priscoli 1979) and that recognize the political nature of 

 most policy issues (Schlesinger 1958; Hipel, Ragade, and Uny 1976; Ingram 

 et al . 1984); and improved methods for analyzing a problem, which go beyond 

 the traditional focus on formal laws and institutional arrangements (Ingram et 

 al . 1984). There is a general lack of guiding theory — ideas that apply no 

 matter what the instream flow issue at hand — in spite of the increased emphasis 

 on the need for specific guidelines. Although commonalties do exist, each 

 instream flow conflict is, because of the differences in participants and type 

 of decision process involved, somewhat unique. What is needed is a systematic 

 method that allows the user to discover the nature of a particular problem; to 

 understand the different perspectives of the organizations involved; to deter- 

 mine the power relationships involved; to predict probable outcomes; and to 

 develop strategies based on those discoveries. The purpose of this paper is 

 to present such a tool. The following chapter discusses the theoretical 

 foundation upon which this tool is built. 



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