Membership of the eight Regional Fishery Management Councils in the United States: are special interests over-represented?

摘要: The failure of modern fisheries management is blamed on myriad socio-economic and technical problems, but the most fundamental reason for might be overwhelming dominance extractive interests in participatory decision-making venues. In United States, commercial fishing made up 49% appointed voting members eight Regional Fishery Management Councils between 1990 2001; recreational 33%, all other combined 17%. Dominance representation over ‘other’ group was statistically significant, this unequal apportionment remained stable throughout 12 years reporting. Contemporary economic sensibilities within ‘industry-captured’ regulatory process generate perverse incentives decisions that conflict with, can undermine, national sustainability goals standards, even when those standards are logically sound agreed to by consensus. Positive feedbacks system reinforce interests. relative these adjusted through an experiment legally mandates formula designed optimize welfare general public, thus testing notion increasing public would improve lacklustre performance US federal management. r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.