| My research investigates political behavior currently important in the areas of trade policy and environmental management. More specifically, my dissertation evaluates the ability of different variables to explain the policy towards foreign fishing adopted by countries after the changes in the Law of the Sea regime. The choice to exploit national resources by developing a national harvesting capacity, using foreign fleets, or some mixture of both is typically considered a product of economic comparative advantage. I argue instead that this decision is a policy choice guided by four factors: the capacity for collective action among fishing industry groups, the organization of bureaucracies with jurisdiction over marine resources, institutional restraint of commons crowding and the degree to which stocks migrate into the waters of other states or the international sea. Political explanations based on collective action and transactions costs guide case studies that use mixtures of statical analysis, interviews and other sources to explain how countries in North America, Latin America and Oceania allocated and managed their newly-acquired resources. |
