Introduction

Fisheries governance is multidimensional. As pointed out in previous chapters, fisheries governors must address a number of concerns, principles, and goals that are all laudable but frequently also in conflict with one another. Resource conservation, securing jobs in the fishery, sustaining communities, feeding the poor, increasing export earnings, etc. are all worthy objectives for fisheries. However, they are not easily reconciled but confront decision-makers with dilemmas that require hard choices (Bailey and Jentoft 1990). Hard choices are always controversial and politically painful; they always come with a cost.

In this chapter we address the question of what a choice is, and what makes choices ‘hard’. These rather simple questions have given rise to extensive scholarly debates, which we will draw on. How rational are individual actors? What is the relation between individual and collective choice: Is collective choice simply the aggregation of individual choices or not? Is a hard choice just more difficult than other choices or is it of a qualitatively different nature? What are typical hard choices in fisheries, and what can we, from a governance perspective, say about their resolution?

In all governance choices, values play a part. What makes some hard and others less hard is the fact that the values confined in them are in conflict. Many governance issues imply such conflicts. This is the reason that we deal with hard choices in fisheries governance in the context of the values implied in them. The cases presented are illustrations of what we feel are typical hard choices fisheries governance faces.

Choosing and Deciding

Choice and decision, or choosing and deciding, are concepts that are rather close. In the literature we often find decision-making as having a somewhat broader meaning, including a whole process from defining a problemto implementing a chosen alternative solution. Thus, choice is related to alternative courses of action, from which one is considered the best in relation to a particular purpose or goal. Choosing is also always related to a particular decision- maker, an individual, group or another form of collective actor, at a particular moment in time. Choices are place and time bound, and they are uniquely related to a particular actor or set of actors, based as they are on their specific experiences and competencies.