Over the past two decades, European Union rhetoric has communicated a desire to take on a normative power role in advancing human rights and sustainable development approaches in the context of global fisheries policy. Officials have propagated an image of a "new Europe," committed to promoting good maritime governance and ensuring responsible fishing worldwide as part of its global responsibility to human rights and sustainable development. These normative principles have at times been framed as an integral part of the European Union's legal and political identity. In practice, however, the European Union's bilateral fishing agreements with developing states have come short of European Union aspirations, facing criticism for hindering rather than aiding local development. This paper explores the bilateral agreements from an international law perspective, engaging in grounded theory, discourse analysis, and a detailed case study on European Union-Senegal fishing relations. For the European Union, the article raises questions about conflicts between national and supranational fishing goals and about the challenges these conflicts present to its goal of normative leadership. More generally, the study suggests implications for enacting international law principles on the ground, as well as for the inherent power dynamics of post-colonial relations.

The EU envisions itself as a global leader in sustainable fisheries governance. This paper explores how two key policies seek to implement these aspirations internationallythe Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) regulation and the Sustainable Fishing Partnership Agreements (SFPAs). We draw on case studies in Thailand and Senegal to examine the specific mechanisms through which the EU influences fisheries governance beyond its territory, respectively through the IUU regulation and SFPAs. Drawing on normative power literature, we argue that the EU utilises network and market modes of governance to translate normative environmental values into third country regulations as part of dialogue and negotiation processes. In particular, we expand on the functioning of the network mode of governance by looking at how the EU has used socialisation and partnership approaches to promote certain values during its dialogues with both countries. In Thailand, the EU helped promote fisheries reform through its IUU yellow card mechanism, but its influence has at times been criticised as too directive. Meanwhile, the latest iteration of the EU's bilateral fishing relations with Senegal under the new SFPA scheme shows promising improvement compared to previous versions, but remains complicated by the two countries' relative power imbalance. Overall, our paper seeks to enrich the engagement of fisheries governance literature with questions of EU relations with third countries. Our two case studies demonstrate how exploring the functioning of normative aspects is significant particularly because the advancement of sustainability in global fisheries depends on concrete, historically complex, and multilaterally constructed power relations.

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Professional fishing and fisheries quota systems can affect women and men differently, yet gender analysis of quota systems is rare. In this article, we use a feminist framing and a mixed methods approach to examine the long-term gendered effects of the introduction of the 1990 quota system in Norway. Using statistics from the National Fishery Registry and the Directorate of Fisheries, we found that the number of women and men registered as fishers has declined since 1990 (an overall decline of 59%). Over this period, men have consistently outnumbered women among registered fishers (2.7-3.2% women), among boat owners (2.23% women in 2017) and particularly among owners of larger boats (> 11 m), which can have multiple quotas (0.35% women in 2017). However, changes in the age and geographic location among women fishers reflect changes to fisheries overall, as well as highlighting the gender-blind entry barriers that disproportionately impact women. In addition, contextualising statistical data with participant interviews conducted in North Norway, especially in Finnmark, enables us to examine more closely why the gender gap remains. This mixed method approach also identifies changes women and men working in fisheries have undergone, while also addressing women fishers' political efforts to improve gender equity in Norwegian fisheries. Our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Norwegian coastal fishing, and particularly women's small but significant presence.

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