ABSTRACT
The subject of global maritime security governance is usually framed by the concept of the global commons. Yet there are significant empirical and conceptual barriers to establishing a well-functioning and robust system of maritime security governance. First, the question remains open whether the high seas are intractably anarchical or potentially susceptible to a strong system of institutionalised governance. Second, maritime space itself resists a binary assessment of the existence or absence of security governance given the range of maritime spaces and their treatment in international law. Third, the securitisation process is not uniform spatially, a condition circumscribing the number of global maritime public security goods requiring collective action. The blue economy constitutes a fourth complication: some littoral states treat the “blue economy” as a problem of managing common-pool resources in order to maximise the extraction of ocean resources without depleting those (renewable) resources, whereas for others, the over-exploitation or fouling of the “blue economy” represents an existential threat to national food security. These potential barriers to maritime security governance raise five questions: What maritime domains are threatened and what are the nature of those threats? What are the necessary conditions requiring an effective system of MSG to emerge? What are the components of a system of MSG? Does the current governance system meet the criteria defining a system of security governance? The answers to these questions lead to a disappointing conclusion: the global system maritime security governance is underdeveloped at best.
