In the collaborative natural resource governance literature, stakeholder participation is most often treated as instrumental to the normative legitimacy and, thus, effectiveness of the environmental state. This study adds a perspective of stakeholder legitimacy as the outcome of competition among groups with differential power operating under the influence of powerful systemic forces. Stakeholders with differential capacities engage in a politics of visibility to determine what is and is not made transparent. What remains invisible is the result of privileged accounts, supported by broader societal values regarding economic development. The research for this paper stems from ethnographic field work of a campaign by conservation and recreational fishing interests to ban the use of commercial gill nets in North Carolina. Conservation and recreational fishing interests gained a greater degree of legitimacy in fishery decision-making processes by utilizing a politics of visibility that reinforced destructive patterns of environmental rights and resource use.
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