Co-management: an alternative to enforcement?

The decline in fish stocks worldwide has often been attributed to problems inherent with resources being treated as common property. Government is usually called upon to define and implement solutions, but the issues society face today cannot be dealt with by the classical, state-centred system of the industrial society. In this article, the Dutch case of fisheries management is used to demonstrate how a government-orientated solution, such as the recently inaugurated EU Community Fisheries Control Agency, and a governance-type solution, such as co-management, relate to each other and whether a partnership between government and the market, such as co-management, can serve as an alternative to direct government enforcement. Although the Dutch case is not a true-bred form of co-management, but rather a case of co-enforcement, it can be used to service a theoretical assessment of the possibilities of co-enforcement at a European scale.