Making public policy through citizen committees: Case histories from the Islands

Abstract

Citizen committees properly designed can strongly influence public policy. Examples are taken from the results of reports on marine affairs that citizen committees wrote in Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Community acceptance and use of each report came about because (1) many members of the committees were in positions to act on the recommendations, (2) the recommendations were specific and called for actions other than studies, and (3) the governor of each area had asked that a report be drawn. To ensure attention to the reports, each governor had agreed that they would be uncensored, widely publicized, and released concurrently to the public and the government.