ABSTRACT
To the extent that neoliberalism, with its calls for letting ‘‘the market’’
address myriad social and economic woes, has become the dominant model for political economic practice today, it should be expected that
environmental governance, too, would be shaped by the neoliberal
imperative to deregulate, liberalize trade and investment, marketize, and
privatize. Here, I analyze development of neoliberalism in the oceans, and
in particular in ocean fisheries. Examining ways that past policy orienta-
tions toward fisheries have influenced development of neoliberal approa-
ches to ocean governance, I contend that neoliberalism in the oceans
centers specifically around concerns about property and the use of privatization to create markets for governing access to and use of ocean
resources. Within the Euro-American tradition that has shaped interna-
tional law of the sea, oceans were long treated as common property, open
to all comers with the means to create and exploit oceanic opportunities.
Recent decades, however, have seen a pronounced shift away from freedom
of the seas. Responding to new economic desires, environmental contra-
dictions, and conflict over ocean resources, representatives from academia,
politics, and business increasingly call for enclosing the oceans within carefully delimited regimes of property rights, be those regimes of state,
individual, or collective control.
