Compliance in the fishery protection zone around Svalbard

Abstract

The 200‐mile Fishery Protection Zone around Svalbard was established by the Norwegian government in 1977 and has been an issue of international dispute ever since. The disagreement is rooted in different interpretations of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty and has led Norway to choose a gentle enforcement of fishery regulations in the area. In practice, this has implied that violators in the Svalbard Zone are not punished. Violation statistics from the Norwegian Coast Guard nevertheless reveal a high degree of compliance by fishermen. The main question of the present article is how this compliance can be explained. It is apparently problematic to account for it through a traditional coercion‐based approach since the threat of sanctions is absent. It is suggested that actual compliance is the result of such various factors as legitimacy, discursive measures, “indirect coercion”; or “creeping compliance,”; diplomatic negotiations, and sometimes also a lack of incentive on the part of fishermen to violate the rules.