Institutions, Incentives and Public Participation. Unveiling the Myth of Public Participation in Coastal Policy Planning in the Netherlands

This paper examines coastal management institutions in the Netherlands in light ofV&W's desire to mainstream public participation in coastal policy processes. First, it teases institutional outcomes and how they shape stakeholder participation within the highly democratic and decentralized system of coastal policy planning. It reveals that, despite the presence of decentralized institutional frameworks within coastal management, public involvement and broad-based stakeholder participation is far from being achieved. This it argues is a result of institutional outcomes and incentive structures which undermine efforts to foster people-centered policy processes by enabling the participation of a minority group within the coastal sector, while excluding the majority of the non-state actors and the public. This paper reveals that the current institutional structure and resultant incentives within it are not a result of bad practice but a product of the unique ecological and social-cultural characteristics of the county. The role that floods and rising sea levels have played in shaping coastal policy was noted in this paper as being the architect of the existing institutions. The paper concludes that, for people-centered policy processes to blossom within public institutions, the right incentives able to pull people toparticipate need to be established. In addition policy makers ought to be sensitive to contextual uniqueness of regions before adopting policy-planning methods as this has tended to explain the growing gap between policy and practice.