A study of a citizensÏ advisory council is used to reexamine a long-standing proposition, referred to here as the resources hypothesis, drawn from the participation literature. The hypothesis proposes that the effectiveness of citizen participation mechanisms will be enhanced by increased access to resources (such as funding and technical assistance). The council considered here is involved in the environmental management of the marine oil trade in Alaska, and has greater access to resources than any other council examined in the extant literature. However, this council has experienced uneven success in securing the implementation of its proposals for policy change. The results suggest that the success of a participatory mechanism [...]
