Bargaining in the Governance of Pacific Coastal Resources: Research and Reform

Merritt Clifton was an environmental journalist and lived in Brigham, Quebec.

Despite the long title, this volume isn’t so much an analytical study as it is a how-to guide, apparently aimed at people involved in resource management bargaining. I guess I’m a bit dense, though, because it took me around 100 pages to realize this even though I’ve been involved in similar bargaining in another province for over 10 years.

Dorcey leads off with Bill Reid’s version of the Haida legend about how the raven created the first humans. That’s the only entertaining chapter of the book. He follows up with resource-by-resource issue analysis, as if setting up an analytical study.

The second half of the book does analyze some bargaining cases — but they’re hypothetical cases. Despite the wealth of background information Dorcey cites, he never addresses actual bargaining situations where real people won or lost, with real results verifiable in Pacific Coast newspapers. Instead, he sets up models of how everyone involved should act to obtain mutually acceptable outcomes, all very nice until even one interested party deviates from the format to pursue self-interest. Further, Dorcey writes professorese, dense, passive, jargon-filled, as if deliberately trying to obscure the point that he has no point beyond “our problems are complex and cooperation would be nice.”

How-to books are rarely exciting. Ideally, though, they’re readable and helpful. This one isn’t likely to help anyone, unless maybe a PhD candidate who needs another source of footnotes for an equally tedious thesis.