Research profile

I' am specialized in Marine Governance. My research focuses on the institutionalization of marine governance arrangements; the dynamics of marine governance at the level of regional seas, processes of political modernization and power.

Marine governance concerns the power game between state actors, market parties and civil society organisations within a multi-level institutional setting, which results in a sharing of competences for policymaking, and a (re)definition of the rules of the game in order to govern activities at sea and control their consequences in a legitimate way. In line with general governance literature, marine governance and the institutionalization of marine governance arrangements is about managing the rules of the game in order to enhance the legitimacy of the public realm. However, what makes the marine domain special is that at seas there is not one authority, nor a clear governance structure, which deals with environmental problems, economic development processes or spatial conflicts between users or between users and the environment. The level of the regional sea shows a patchwork of policies, institutions and regimes complexes (of shipping, fishing, renewables, oil and gas, tourism, deepsea mining, etc.) within the institutional settings of regional seas.