Home  About FNI  Research  Publications  Staff  News & events  Contact		FNI NEWS Making Fishery Agreements Work (27.02.2012) Why do people obey the law? And why do states abide by their international commitments? These are among the questions raised in a new book by FNI Research Director Geir Hønneland. The setting is the Barents Sea, home to some of the most productive fishing grounds on the planet, including the world’s largest cod stock. Norway and Russia manage these fish resources together, in what appears to be a successful exception to the rule of failed fisheries management: stocks are in good shape, institutional cooperation is expanding and takes place in a constructive atmosphere. The Barents Sea fishery is seen as one of the best-managed international fisheries in the world, and the book specifically enquires into the lessons to be learnt from the Norwegian–Russian partnership. Hønneland argues that post-agreement bargaining helps activate norms and establish standard operating procedure that furthers precautionary fisheries management. - Quite conspicuously, Russia has largely complied with its international obligation to conduct precautionary fisheries management in the Barents Sea, while at the same time scolding this policy for being anti-Russian, says Geir Hønneland. - In the Barents Sea fisheries management, Russia has followed suit more or less unwillingly, with Norway at the wheel. Transnational seafaring norms and good-neighbourly relations may have tuned the negotiators in on a pro-compromise wavelength, but institutional factors can also explain Russia's compliance, he says. - Norway has had considerable success in its attempts to influence Russian through post-agreement bargaining, at technical or scientific levels and in direct contact between the heads of delegation. Hence, Russia has gradually spun itself into an institutional web of continuously more elaborate decision-making procedures, with Norway taking the leading role after the end of the Cold War. - There has also been a 'drive towards compromise' in the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission that has sometimes overshadowed strictly defined national interests, or at least led the parties to interpret such interests as positively as they could, weighing them up against the possibility of reaching agreement. Compromise has become the institutional hallmark of the Joint Commission, Hønneland concludes. Share: More information About the book > See Edward Elgar's website Citation: Geir Hønneland, Making Fishery Agreements Work: Post-Agreement Bargaining in the Barents Sea. Cheltenham/Northampton, MA, Edward Elgar, 2012, 160 p. ISBN 978-0-85793-362-1. About the author Geir Hønneland is Research Director at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute and adjunct professor at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Community Planning, University of Tromsø. He works mainly with questions related to international environmental and resource management in the Arctic. Reviews Oran Young, University of California, Santa Barbara, US: 'Environmental governance is not just a matter of laying down clear rules and regulations and then finding ways to enforce them. Developing the idea of “post-agreement bargaining” and drawing on his exceptional knowledge of the world-class fisheries of the Barents Sea, Geir Hønneland illuminates the ongoing processes of interpretation, mutual accommodation, and adjustment to changing circumstances that play an essential role in making environmental regimes work.' Jesper Raakjær, Aalborg University, Denmark: ‘This book provides very detailed insights to how fisheries agreements can shape norms and set standards leading to a high degree of compliance and well-managed fisheries. The book provides a very comprehensive description of the development of the management of the Barents Sea fishery since the 1990s, including an impressive account of the Norwegian–Russian fisheries negotiations. The book provides an important contribution to and further advances our understanding on the factors influencing rule-compliance in fisheries and in fact beyond.’ David Fluharty, University of Washington, US: ‘In Making Fishery Agreements Work, Geir Hønneland extends his reputation as a leading scholar on Norwegian/Russian fisheries relationships. His new contribution focuses on the complicated and hard to track post-bargaining processes that can be used to improve compliance over time in situations with large power differentials. Well grounded in compliance theory and common property resource management, Hønneland’s interviews and personal observations capture the empirical motivations that underlie compliance in joint Barent’s Sea fisheries.’ Bonnie McCay, Rutgers University, US: ‘Fishing vessels plying the cold waters of the Barents Sea provide the empirical basis for this extraordinary effort to answer the question of what it takes for people and their governments to make and stick to agreements and follow the rules. Based on years of study of arrangements between Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia and interviews with the captains of the fishing ships that seek cod and other species in the far north, Hønneland brings findings and theory from many disciplines to the question. In so doing he offers a powerful argument about how post-agreement bargaining at both state and individual levels contributes to compliance and hence sustainable fisheries.’ Top		The Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI) is an independent foundation engaged in research on international environmental, energy, and resource management politics. The Institute maintains a multi-disciplinary approach, with main emphasis on political science, economics, and international law.
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