ABSTRACT
Opportunity-creation in fisheries as a social-political governance issue will be analysed in terms of four categories of variables. These categories of variables include diversity, dynamics and complexity as general features of fisheries, and opportunities as forms of interactions in which these features are operationalised and made tractable. The categories of variables also include first and second order governing variables as organisational and structural conditions within which opportunities are created, and modes of governing as the mixes of public and private responsibilities for the creation and maintenance of such opportunities. These four categories of variables are building blocks for an analytical framework with which to gain insight in important aspects of opportunity-creation for fisheries in a European context. An opportunity can be said to be a positively experienced tension to be evaluated from a future-orientated perspective, while a problem is more like a negatively experienced tension within a past-oriented perspective.
