Abstract

States use public consultation processes for civic input in the hope of finding expertise, legitimization, and civic engagement for their policy. Non-state actors in turn see these consultations as a steppingstone for the inclusion of their preferences in inter-state negotiations, but the strategies they use to gain access differ.
This thesis fills two gaps in the academic literature by examining the consultation processes in Canada and the United States which prefaced the Columbia River Treaty renegotiations. First, the thesis analyzes how non-state actors are conceptualized and differentiated within the literature as well as synthesizing what strategies they use to gain access to consultations and policymaking. Second, the resulting framework of actors and strategies is applied to the Columbia River Treaty renegotiation consultations to see if such a taxonomy has value in understanding and anticipating how non-state actors enter into governance. Since river systems are at the juncture of strong tensions surrounding economic development, clean water, natural resources, environmental protection, and transportation they provide an ideal site for such an analysis.
I conduct interviews with 20 state and non-state actors who were part of the Columbia River Treaty consultations as well as examine documentary evidence to uncover the strategies they used to access the consultations. I find that while non-state actors often follow the strategies as anticipated by the framework, they tend to stay within the confines of the state-led consultation processes.