ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the influence of different bodies of scholarship on one field of environmental policy—fisheries management. The collapse of many US fisheries has coincided with an overall disenchantment and reexamination of environmental policies in the United States. The greatest influence on fisheries policy arguably has come from the proponents of property rights and market forces to avert the tragedy of the commons. In the early 1990s, one of the most controversial approaches to environmental law was that associated with “free-market environmentalism.” The “free market environmentalism” literature often cites the emergence of individual transferable quotas as a step toward recognition of the superiority of property rights in ensuring efficiency and efficacy in resource management. The social science literature published both before and after Garrett Hardin’s essay on the tragedy of the commons has had an enormous impact on the trend toward property approaches in environmental policy.
