On Governance of Quality Shipping in the Baltic Sea : Exploring Collective Action in Polycentric Contexts
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation aims at clarifying how multiple public and private decision-making actors co-exist in the governing of shipping quality in the Baltic Sea, and which mechanisms allow these multiactor arrangements to proliferate and sustain themselves. Acknowledging that collective action problems undermine quality governance, this research sought to collect empirical evidence documenting the role of polycentricity, which implies the existence of overlapping and competing centers of decision making embedded within multiple interdependent and often conflicting contexts, for quality shipping and the way it is conceptualized, operationalized, and practiced. A key argument in this thesis is that whereas the shipping industry is global, quality shipping governance is not; therefore, quality shipping governance takes a form of contextually-bound steering. Quality shipping is defined in this research as shipping that aims at safety and environmental protection, while still maintaining economic sustainability. The two central aspect of quality in shipping safety and environmental were used to empirically grasp and operationalize quality shipping in four individual studies conducted within this dissertation project. The individual empirical studies do not build upon each other directly, however they are linked thematically, conceptually, and methodologically, and allow for interconnected, though varying insights on the emergence and development of collective action by revealing how the practices associated with quality shipping were defined and materialized. The empirical research was built upon reconstructing the governance process on the basis of methodological localism , that is, focusing on actors who are involved in the process of steering, their interactions, and how institutions structure the interaction within multiple interconnected contexts in which interactions are embedded. This thesis relates to the wider body of research on governance by focusing on how quality shipping governance cuts across different levels and jurisdictions and penetrates the grey zones in which neither markets nor states can solely solve collective action problems. Reflecting on the impact of multiactor interaction that connects different functionalities and localities, it contributes to four interconnected theoretical debates on governance: on the role of politics and power, on the territorial dimension of boundary-spanning governance, on the new role images and dilemmas, and on governing of governance, or metagovernance. This dissertation makes an empirical argument to support the proposition that quality shipping governance is not a technical depoliticized process of problem-fixing, but a battlefield overrun with power struggles and conflicts over resources, images, and institutions. The four individual studies portray much of the interaction in existing quality shipping governance as informal and ad hoc, and emphasize that everyday inter-organizational exchanges constitute the larger part of interactions between shipping actors in governance of quality shipping. It further speculates about the role of metagovernance and interactions that allow actors to establish mechanisms that link vertical (hierarchical) and horizontal (market and network) dimensions of governance. The thesis claims that if we want more quality shipping, we need to be able to explain and master the connecting relation between actors and institutions that enhance multiactor coordination and make collaboration work. The practical contribution of this study is in elaborating a framework for formulation and implementation of socio-economic innovation for balanced development and public well-being in polycentric contexts using the example of quality shipping governance. The focus on concrete instances of collective action in quality shipping governance in the Baltic Sea demonstrates that interactions, institutions and mechanisms vary in time and space. This finding has important implications for solving social and environmental challenges in arenas other than shipping, because it shows that collective action is contextually-bound and that local solutions can be found to problems conventionally identified as global.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Daria Gritsenko
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1592042871