Environmental Policy Failure in the Common Fisheries Policy: A deep dive into the role of stakeholders

This thesis describes the deductive research concerning the role of stakeholders in the policy process of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). It aims to answer the following research question: what is the role of stakeholders in the policy failures regarding the sustainability of the Common Fisheries Policy? To that end, interviews and a document analysis are completed. The case of the 2013 CFP reform is chosen because it is innovative in the contribution of stakeholders. The growing participation of environmental NGOs led to the adoption of new environmental measures such as Maximum Sustainable Yield and the landing obligation (Orach et al., 2017). Hence, the 2013 CFP should have led to a sustainable management of fisheries. However, in reality the CFP has not been able to achieve the results it set out to do. In spite of progress in the Atlantic seas, the CFP has not prevented overfishing of stocks in the Mediterranean and Black Sea (COM, 2018). For this reason this thesis treats...Show moreThis thesis describes the deductive research concerning the role of stakeholders in the policy process of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). It aims to answer the following research question: what is the role of stakeholders in the policy failures regarding the sustainability of the Common Fisheries Policy? To that end, interviews and a document analysis are completed. The case of the 2013 CFP reform is chosen because it is innovative in the contribution of stakeholders. The growing participation of environmental NGOs led to the adoption of new environmental measures such as Maximum Sustainable Yield and the landing obligation (Orach et al., 2017). Hence, the 2013 CFP should have led to a sustainable management of fisheries. However, in reality the CFP has not been able to achieve the results it set out to do. In spite of progress in the Atlantic seas, the CFP has not prevented overfishing of stocks in the Mediterranean and Black Sea (COM, 2018). For this reason this thesis treats the CFP as policy failure. In order to explain policy failure, the mechanistic approach is used. When the policy process is regarded as a system of mechanisms, it becomes possible to identify causal relations (Van der Heijden, 2021). Within this approach, first-order mechanisms directly alter stakeholder behaviour during the decision making process. In a second-order mechanism, the effects of this behaviour achieve a particular policy outcome (Capano, 2020). Specifically, certain first-order mechanisms such as competition and blame avoidance behaviour are connected to certain second-order mechanisms, negative framing and countermobilization, resulting in a negative feedback loop, thus failure (Compton & ‘t Hart, 2019). However, it turns out to be difficult to fit the mechanisms at work in the CFP policy process in one feedback loop. Mechanisms from different feedback loops occur at the same time, rendering it impractical to find a straightforward cause of policy failure. Moreover, in reality the difference between first and second-order mechanisms is ambiguous. Therefore, it is concluded the mechanistic approach has limited explanatory value concerning the role of stakeholders in a policy failure. Nevertheless, it is indicated the behaviour of stakeholders during the policy process impacts their evaluation of policy. In this case, the environmental NGOs displayed willingness to reform, whereas the fisheries representatives were more reluctant. Environmental NGOs consider the CFP failed because the implementation is deficient and compliance is low, although the policy itself is sufficient. On the contrary, fisheries representatives explain the fault is in the policy design. That is why it is argued reluctance corresponds with policy failure and willingness with programmatic failure. Second, stakeholders engage in image building. Throughout the process, actors create perceptions about each other, which clash with their own perspectives. The divergent expectations limit the capacity to collaborate because actors feel they can never live up to expectations. As this impacts compliance negatively, this might be another reason why the CFP has not succeeded.Show less

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Environmental Policy Failure in the Common Fisheries Policy: A deep dive into the role of stakeholders