Managing straddling stocks: the interplay of global and regional regimes

During the past decade, a number of rivalries over fish stocks straddling from coastal zones into the high seas turned into bitter disputes involving some of the world's foremost fishing nations. This article examines the interplay of global and regional efforts to strengthen the basis for management of high seas fisheries. The overall effect of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement for the effectiveness of regional management of straddling stocks is to support and globalize institutional features, especially regarding compliance control, that had so far been confined to the most advanced regional regimes. Such interplay between regimes can usefully be analyzed by distinguishing four causal pathways: (1) diffusion, in that one regime may influence the material contents of another; (2) political spillover, when interests or capabilities defined under one regime influence the operation of another; (3) normative interplay, when the rules upheld in one regime conflict or reinforce those established under another; and (4) operational interplay, referring to deliberate coordination of activities under separate regimes in order to avoid normative conflict or wasteful duplication. The article seeks to pinpoint the conditions under which these types of interplay are triggered.