EU Common Fisheries Policy failure – combining social network theory with non-cooperative bargaining modeling to assess the role of governance and information lobbying

Despite many reforms, the EU Common Fishery Policy (CFP) is persistently plagued by policy failure leading to overfishing and subsequently depletion of fish stocks (STECF, 2023). Explaining continuous overfishing, the existing literature refers mostly to temporal inconsistencies, i.e. political decision-makers which have rather high discount rates, making short-term exploitation of fish stocks politically favorable while contrasting scientific advice and societies’ long-term interest in a sustainable fishery (Cardinale and Svedäng; 2008; Khalilian et al, 2010; Froese et al., 2011; Voss et al., 2016). Furthermore, some scholars refer to specific institutional set-ups implying that the legislative procedure of the fishing quota setting is dominated by national council members who are preference outliers favoring overfishing (Franchino and Rahming, 2003). However, these explanations are not convincing and fall short of fully explaining the mechanisms underlying EU overfishing policy decisions. In this context, this paper suggests an empirical case study using a political economy approach combining policy network theory with a non-cooperative legislative bargaining model (Braack et. al.,2023). Specifically, the CFP is an equilibrium outcome of a multi-stakeholder process, where the final CFP decision is the result of legislative bargaining among involved legislative actors. Based on Braack et. al., (2023), when a mean voter Theorem applies, final policy outcomes result in a weighted mean of legislators' ideal points. The weights of individual legislators depend on the constitutional decision-making rule. Legislators’ policy preferences are derived from political communication processes among governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, where actors update their beliefs on how specific policies impact relevant policy outcomes. Following Friedkin, we assume the communication process is organized in social networks, i.e. actors’ equilibrium policy beliefs result as a stationary point that depends on network structures (Friedkin and Johnson, 1990, Henning et al. 2019). Based on our theory, biased policy decisions may result from a mismatch of legislators’ biased beliefs and legislative decision-making power equilibrium. Therefore, we set out to determine to what extent policy failure is driven by (i) knowledge problems of information exchange (ii) power distribution issues, where knowledge is well distributed in the network, however, the lobbying and influence constitute the main driver, or (iii) a combination of knowledge and power dynamics that hinder sustainable policy outcomes. To apply our theory empirically, a quantitative survey methodology was utilized through a multilevel CFP stakeholder network approach (Pappi and Henning, 1998; Henning et al. 2019). The questionnaire scope covered selected policy pillars of the CFP in EU waters. Data was collected from survey respondents on their engagement in four network categories: reputation (influence), information exchange, political support, and social networks. In addition, respondents answered a set of questions on their preferences regarding their organizations’ optimal CFP goals, outcomes, and policy instruments that are most suitable for the upcoming decade. Exponential Random Graph Models are used to estimate the network structure generation and identify the significant network variables. Our findings contribute to both network modeling of underlying decision-making mechanisms in real-world political systems, as well as to identifying institutional options implying a more efficient future CFP.