Stokke, O. S. and Hoel, A. H. Splitting the Gains: Political Economy of the Barents Sea Fisheries. Cooperation and Conflict, XXVI, 1991, 49-65

Abstract

Despite the phase-out of third countries and a growing cooperation between Norway and the Soviet Union, the Barents Sea fisheries management system has failed to reach its conservational goals in the past decade. Politically, however, it has been very successful. The parties have managed to lay conflictual issues aside in order to maximize cooperative gains. A growing bias in the bilateral distribution between Norway and the Soviet Union has developed, mainly by declining transfers to Norway of Soviet cod and haddock. We have sought to explain this growing bias, exploring three analytical paths: interest-based, power-based, and bargaining-dynamics approaches to the study of international negotiations. As to the relevance of power, military capabilities are ill-suited to the present situation, but issue-specific interest-based power stemming from a stronger relative preference on the part of the Soviet Union for her own cod offers an acceptable explanation. There is also a possible impact of salient solutions, in that more or less fixed absolute-quantity keys employed by the negotiators throughout the 1980s concerning quotas allocated to the Soviet Union have withstood the reductions of groundfish transferred to Norway.