Transnational partnerships’ strategies in global fisheries governance

Abstract

This paper explores the role of transnational partnerships within a transboundary policy problem, namely illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing. It focuses on an understudied aspect in the partnership literature, namely 'how and why do partnerships engage in advocacy'? The article theorizes and empirically explores the variation in strategies used by transnational partnerships to shape IUU policy development and implementation, drawing on theories from comparative politics and international relations. The paper finds that transnational partnerships often combine inside strategies with service provision, but that they rarely use outside strategies, and analyzes this variation in strategies by looking at changes in issues complexity, institutional complexity, and salience for state concerning IUU fishing policy. The paper ends by discussing the implication of these findings in relation to the previous literature on interest groups in comparative politics and on international non-governmental organizations and transnational partnerships in international relations.

Evolving Perspectives of Stewardship in the Seafood Industry

“…Aware of the existential threat to the legal toothfish operations, COLTO members invested USD 2 million to self-fund investigations into illegal fishing activities; a series of high-profile reports were broadcast on national television in Australia, and dramatic pursuits of vessels engaged in illegal operations helped to build further awareness among the general public and politicians (Masters, 2002;Österblom and Folke, 2013). Since the drama of the early 2000s, COLTO has entered a relatively more dormant state in which it maintains the networks necessary for rapid response to illegal activity, and activates them as needed (Petersson, 2019). COLTO's activities have now expanded to focus not only on eliminating illegal activity, but also to embrace a broader stewardship role by focusing on reducing seabird bycatch, whale depredation on toothfish longline fisheries, and science communication (COLTO, 2020).…”

Is this a men’s world? On the need to study descriptive representation of women in lobbying and policy advocacy

“…Interest groups and political advocates today play important roles in modern democracies. They are involved in placing issues on the political agenda (Jones & Baumgartner, 2005), supplying knowledge and expertise as policy input (De Bruycker, 2016;Flöthe, 2020), discussing and framing issues in media debates (Binderkrantz et al, 2017;Junk & Rasmussen, 2019) and facilitating service provision and implementation (Petersson, 2019). Moreover, we can see organized interests as a factor that affects policy change (Baumgartner et al, 2009) and the linkage between public opinion and policy (Rasmussen & Reher, 2019;Bevan & Rasmussen, 2020).…”