The historical origins of wilderness management : a comparative analysis of fixed anchor policy

Driven by normative concerns with the inherent tension between bureaucratic accountability and discretion, much of the public administration literature places explanatory primacy on the procedural evolution of proposed rules and policies. While perhaps advantageous from a reformative standpoint, such studies provide little insight into the nature and origins of the agency preferences which underpin these proposed rules and policies. Employing a preprocedural analytical framework, this study attempts to explain variation in agency preferences concerning the management of fixed climbing anchors in designated wilderness areas. The author suggests that this variation in preferences may be a function of distinctive, historically based management traditions which have developed within the agencies