There are many potential benefits when stakeholders in a destination collaborate together and attempt to build a consensus about tourism policies. First, such collaboration potentially avoids the cost of resolving adversarial conflicts among stakeholders in the long term (Healey 1998).Adversarial conflicts are wasteful as stakeholders entrench their mutual suspicions, improve their adversarial skills and play out similar conflicts around each subsequent issue. Second, collaborative relations may be more politically legitimate if they give stakeholders a greater influence in the decision-making which affects their lives (Benveniste, G. 1989 Mastering the Politics of Planning: Crafting Credible Plans and Policies that Make a Difference. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Benveniste 1989). Third, this collaboration improves the coordination of policies and related actions, and promotes consideration of the economic, environmental, and social impacts of tourism. The resulting outcomes are potentially more efficient and sustainable (Lane 1994). Further, collaboration adds value by building on the store of knowledge, insights, and capabilities of stakeholders in the destination (Bramwell and Broom 1989). For example, Roberts and Bradley (1991) suggest that the sharing of ideas among stakeholders results in a richer understanding of issues and leads to more innovative policies. Such joint working may also promote a shared ownership of the resulting policies, and thereby channel energies into joint implementation or co-production (Susskind and Elliott 1983).

>While locally-based tourism collaborations may offer advantages to stakeholders and destinations, their development gives rise to difficult challenges. For example, the resource allocations, policy ideas, and institutional practices embedded within society may often restrict the influence of particular stakeholders on the collaborative arrangements. The power of stakeholders is often unequal, and it is suggested that power governs the interaction of individuals, organizations and agencies influencing, or trying to influence, the formulation of tourism policy and the manner in which it is implemented (Hall 1994:52).

>The purpose of this paper is to present a framework of issues to consider when evaluating whether local collaborative tourism policymaking is inclusionary and involves collective learning and consensus-building. Destination managers need advice about how to promote locally-based collaborative arrangements, and the framework is intended to assist them in this work. The proposed framework incorporates consideration of the extent to which power imbalances among stakeholders are reduced, if at all, within a collaboration. It discusses whether and how relevant stakeholders have a voice, are involved in collective learning, and build trust and consensual views across divisions. Further, the paper indicates the practical value of the theoretical framework by applying it to assess stakeholder involvement in the development of a visitor management plan for the Hope Valley and Edale in Britains Peak District National Park. This area has long been a magnet for visitors, and there is concern about the impacts of tourism on its physical environment and ways of life. While the circumstances of each collaborative initiative are unique, important general lessons still may be learnt by assessing whether individual initiatives succeed in being inclusionary and based on collective learning and consensus-building.

2. Local collaborative policy-making

The framework developed in the paper to assess local collaborative tourism policy-making draws ideas from literature about interorganizational collaboration, communicative approaches to planning, and citizen participation. The review suggests that some recent assessments of tourism policymaking draw on general theories of interorganizational collaboration to explain how stakeholders may collaborate to solve problems (Jamal and Getz 1995; Long 1997;Selin and Beason 1991). In the field of interorganizational theory, Gray suggests that collaboration occurs when the problem is complex and a single organization cannot solve it on its own. It is a process in which those parties with a stake in the problem actively seek a mutually determined solution, with stakeholders retaining their independence in decision making despite agreeing to abide by shared rules among the collaborating parties (Gray 1989:xviii). Getz and Jamal (1994) use interorganizational theory to assess stakeholder collaboration in tourism planning in Canadas Canmore and Bow Corridor, while Jamal and Getz 1997 employ the same theory to examine community-based visioning for tourism development. Interorganizational collaboration theory also forms a basis for Selin and Chavez 1995 to develop an evolutionary model of partnerships in destinations, and for Selin and Myers 1998 to assess factors constraining or promoting the effectiveness of such partnerships.

>Reed reviews Jamal and Getzs work on collaboration in destinations and argues that While power relations are included within collaborative theory, it is frequently assumed that collaboration can overcome power imbalances by involving all stakeholders in a process that meets their needs (Reed 1997:567).She contends that such power differences among stakeholders actually are so embedded in society that they always affect the nature of the collaboration. A further problem not highlighted by Reed is that collaboration theory might suggest the inequitable proposition that participants may be excluded from collaborative arrangements if they lack resources or capacity. Hence, Jamal and Getz suggest that a stakeholder who is impacted by the actions of other stakeholders has a right to become involved in order to moderate those impacts, but must also have the resources and skills (capacity) in order to participate (Jamal and Getz 1995:194).

>The literature on communicative approaches to planning explores opportunities to enable relevant stakeholders to have a voice in policymaking. For example, Healey 1997 contends that planning should draw on the webs of relations found in local areas and build the capacities of stakeholders so that they can have more direct influence on their own lives. It is argued that it is important to promote horizontal forms of collaboration, where stakeholders with legitimate and often conflicting interests in a local area engage in discourse and consensus-building. The challenge is seen as developing the capacity of the diverse stakeholders who potentially could assert concern about their locality (Bryson and Crosby 1992; Forester 1989; Innes 1995).

>Healey 1997emphasizes how systemic constraints, such as power inequalities and institutional practices, can inhibit the influence of stakeholders on collaborative arrangements, but she also moves beyond simply considering who controls the resource flows. Attention is focused on the processes within collaboration through which relations can be built up among relevant stakeholders, and to the communicative forms through which their often conflicting interests and views can be identified and consensus developed. Much emphasis is placed on respectful speaking and listening among stakeholders (Forester 1989). It is contended that forms of dialogue, collective learning, and consensus-building are required which build trust, confidence, and mutual understanding across the often deep fractures which divide the stakeholders (Friedmann 1992). In such ways Consensus-building practices have transformative potential, changing the frameworks for thinking, and potentially changing the content and modes of use of rules, and the way resources flow (Healey 1997:265).

>In the literature on citizen participation in tourism policymaking there is much discussion of the merits of specific techniques of involvement (Marien and Pizam 1998; Ritchie 1985). However, the broader processes of citizens and industry leaders crafting a vision for the development of a destination are also examined (Ritchie 1993). Some contributions suggest that there are differing degrees of intensity of participation in the planning process, with Arnstein 1969 work on citizen involvement in decision-making sometimes being cited (Haywood 1988; Simmons 1994). Arnstein describes increasingly intense citizen inputs on a continuum whose opposite poles are manipulation and citizen control, and which distinguishes between tokenism and citizen power.

>This papers theoretical framework draws mutually compatible ideas from literature in the above three fields. The framework identifies issues to consider when evaluating the extent to which a local initiative in collaborative tourism policymaking is inclusionary and promotes collective learning and consensus-building. Concern for the important systemic constraints which affect a collaboration is integrated with the need to identify whether there is evidence of more democratic forms of policymaking. Three sets of issues are considered in the framework, these being the scope of the collaboration, its intensity, and the degree to which consensus emerges among participants. Important issues not included in the framework surround the implementation of the policies resulting from the collaboration. Numbers assigned to each issue in the framework are also used in its application to the Hope Valley and Edale case study.