These authorities were used by the Commission to designate MPAs based on recommendations from the Initiative which was structured to follow the substantive and procedural requirements included in the MLPA. The Ocean Protection Council (2003), a non regulatory DAPT mw body, was created to improve integration of marine resource policy and articulation with related state and federal policies. Analysts of public policy processes have long recognized implementation of formally adopted public policies as a complex

process (Lasswell, 1956; Peters and Pierre, 2003). Early empirical research found that implementation was not automatic, but rather frequently problematic Selleckchem CAL-101 and quite variable in achieving desired results. This research further led to the realization that political and bureaucratic components of implementation were often not addressed or even identified in policy

making (Brewer and deLeon, 1983). Implementation analyses include specific policy arenas (e.g., Lin, 2000), general theoretical treatments (e.g., Ingram, 1990) and reviews of the field (e.g. deLeon and deLeon, 2002; Peters and Pierre, 2003). State level public policy implementation in the U.S. federal system must address interrelationships between authorities, policies and programs of the national government and those of a state. Both public policy formulation and then public policy implementation also take place in the context of prior public policies and overlapping jurisdictions (Fox et al., 2013c). By 1999, the federal government had established a few Marine Managed Areas along the California coast, the largest of which was the 15,783 square kilometer Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary established in 1992. None of the federally designated protected areas

in California waters have significant restrictions on the take of living resources but seek to protect cultural and geological marine resources (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2008). In the Channel Islands, prior to the MLPA Initiative, an MPA design process was a joint state–federal process, with the state designated recommended Astemizole MPAs established four years prior to federal action (Caldwell and Thesing, 2006). As the Initiative launched its first study region pilot process in the Central Coast in 2005, an explicit decision was made to work solely within state authority despite federal agency interest in a combined state–federal effort. The BRTF based this decision on two fundamental concerns: first, any federal action creating MPAs requires separate substantive and procedural regulatory standards and processes; second, federal representatives could not commit to the rigorous timetable set in the first Initiative MOU.