Instead of having rights as citizens, the Forestry frame turns actors
into stakeholders of a business organisation, and reduces the expectations
that can be put on the role given to the ‘stakeholders’ (as
opposed to ‘citizens’) in the planning processes. When perceiving
Metsähallitus as a forest company ‘unfairly at war with some of the
environmental groups’, as some of the informants put it, the perception
of collaborative processes is also changed. The purpose of involving
the environmental groups in participatory processes is not primarily
to give them an opportunity to influence the outcome by engaging
them in fair deliberations, but to show them that amongst the wider
(local) stakeholder community, they are a minority. The participatory
process, then, becomes a form of marginalisation for the ENGOs: by putting
their view against the local ‘majority’ the process decreases rather
than increases the influence of ENGOs over the outcome compared to
if they had not participated at all. In contrast to Metsähallitus' approach,
the collaborative planning literature defines the role of the management
agency to facilitate the communication between participants by
actively seeking a solution that accommodates the minimum requirements
of all concerned (Innes, 2004). Metsähallitus does perceive itself
also as a facilitator, but rather in the way of providing different actors a
forum for “figuring out their differences by themselves”.