Seeds of distrust: conflicts over sustainable development in a local fracking policy network in New York State

ABSTRACT

Pursuing economic, environmental and social sustainability requires networks endowed with persistent relationships between stakeholders. Networks serve as the vehicle to coordinate diverse policy goals among stakeholders. Within the networks, stakeholders inevitably experience some level of distrust due to the complexity and uncertainty of the unstructured problems on the sustainability. However, little is known about why stakeholders often distrust with one another in the networks. By analysing a local fracking policy network in NYS, we suggest that distrust is influenced by incongruent ecological worldviews, policy goals incongruence in the triple bottom line of sustainability, characterization framing, policy communications and knowledge exchange.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• distrust
• environment policy network
• goals incongruence
• characterization framing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Regarding the missing data, the seven non-responding network members include the Brownsville legislature, the Brownsville legal department, two regional business associations, an environmentally focused legal organization and two statewide oil and gas associations.

2. The four informants include (1) a manager of an industry support organization, (2) a community organizer of a landowners’ group, (3) a programme manager for hydraulic fracturing-related activities in local and statewide civic environmental organizations and (4) Brownsville’s director of economic development.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management [grant number 20150042].

Notes on contributors

Junesoo Lee

Junesoo LeeLee is an Assistant Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management, Sejong, Korea. His research considers strategic management in the paradoxical contexts where sustainable development is attained through unsustainable purposes and structures of networks.

Jeongyoon Lee

Jeongyoon Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at Ball State University. Her research interests include collaborative governance, distrust, conflict management and sustainability, environmental policy and non-profit management.