摘要：Stakeholder participation is advocated widely, but there is little structured, empirical researchinto its influence on policy development. We aim to further the insight into the characteristics of participatorypolicy development by comparing it to expert-based policy development for the same case. We describethe process of problem framing and analysis, as well as the knowledge base used. We apply an uncertaintyperspective to reveal differences between the approaches and speculate about possible explanations. Weview policy development as a continuous handling of substantive uncertainty and process uncertainty, andinvestigate how the methods of handling uncertainty of actors influence the policy development. Ourfindings suggest that the wider frame that was adopted in the participatory approach was the result of amore active handling of process uncertainty. The stakeholders handled institutional uncertainty bybroadening the problem frame, and they handled strategic uncertainty by negotiating commitment and byincluding all important stakeholder criteria in the frame. In the expert-based approach, we observed a morepassive handling of uncertainty, apparently to avoid complexity. The experts handled institutionaluncertainty by reducing the scope and by anticipating windows of opportunity in other policy arenas.Strategic uncertainty was handled by assuming stakeholders' acceptance of noncontroversial measures thatbalanced benefits and sacrifices. Three other observations are of interest to the scientific debate onparticipatory policy processes. Firstly, the participatory policy was less adaptive than the expert-basedpolicy. The observed low tolerance for process uncertainty of participants made them opt for a rigorous"once and for all" settling of the conflict. Secondly, in the participatory approach, actors preferredprocedures of traceable knowledge acquisition over controversial topics to handle substantive uncertainty.This excluded the use of expert judgment only, whereas the experts relied on their judgment in the absenceof a satisfactory model. Thirdly, our study provides empirical evidence for the frequent claim thatstakeholder involvement increases the quality of the knowledge base for a policy development process.Because these findings were obtained in a case that featured good process management and a guidinggeneral policy framework from higher authorities, they may not generalize beyond such conditions
