Assessing marine spatial planning governmentality

Abstract

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is advanced by its champions as an impartial and rational process that can address complex management issues. We argue that MSP is not innately rational and that it problematises marine issues in specific ways, often reflecting hegemonic agendas. The illusion of impartial rationality in MSP is derived from governmentalities that appear progressive but serve elite interests. By understanding the creation of governmentalities, we can design more equitable planning processes. We conceptualise governmentalities as consisting of problematisations, rationalities and governance technologies, and assess England’s first marine plans to understand how specific governmentalities de-radicalise MSP. We find that progressive framings of MSP outcomes, such as enhanced well-being, are deployed by the government to garner early support for MSP. These elements, however, become regressively problematised in later planning phases, where they are framed by the government as being difficult to achieve and are pushed into future iterations of the process. Eviscerating progressive elements from the planning process clears the way for the government to focus on implementing a neoliberal form of MSP. Efforts to foster radical MSP must pay attention to the emergence of governmentalities, how they travel through time/space and be cognisant of where difference can be inserted into planning processes. Achieving progressive MSP will require the creation of a political frontier early in the process, which cannot be passed until pathways for progressive socio-environmental outcomes have been established; advocacy for disenfranchised groups; broadening MSP evaluations to account for unintended impacts; and the monitoring of progressive objectives.

Full text

RESEARCH
Assessing marine spatial planning governmentality
Wesley Flannery
1
&Ben McAteer
1
Received: 9 September 2019 /Accepted: 23 April 2020
#The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Marine spatial planning (MSP) is advanced by its champions as an impartial and rational process that can address complex
management issues. We argue that MSP is not innately rational and that it problematises marine issues in specific ways, often
reflecting hegemonic agendas. The illusion of impartial rationality in MSP is derived from governmentalities that appear
progressive but serve elite interests. By understanding the creation of governmentalities, we can design more equitable planning
processes. We conceptualise governmentalities as consisting of problematisations, rationalities and governance technologies, and
assess England’s first marine plans to understand how specific governmentalities de-radicalise MSP. We find that progressive
framings of MSP outcomes, such as enhanced well-being, are deployed by the government to garner early support for MSP.
These elements, however, become regressively problematised in later planning phases, where they are framed by the government
as being difficult to achieve and are pushed into future iterations of the process. Eviscerating progressive elements from the
planning process clears the way for the government to focus on implementing a neoliberal form of MSP. Efforts to foster radical
MSP must pay attention to the emergence of governmentalities, how they travel through time/space and be cognisant of where
difference can be inserted into planning processes. Achieving progressive MSP will require the creation of a political frontier
early in the process, which cannot be passed until pathways for progressive socio-environmental outcomes have been established;
advocacy for disenfranchised groups; broadening MSP evaluations to account for unintended impacts; and the monitoring of
progressive objectives.
Keywords Marine spatial planning .Governmentality .Marine governance .Stakeholder participation .Transformative
governance
Introduction
Marine spatial planning (MSP) has been quickly adopted by
national governments as the solution to an array of issues, yet
questions remain about its capacity to reform unsustainable
marine management (Ritchie and Ellis 2010; Jones et al.
2016; Smith and Jentoft 2017; Smith 2018; Tafon et al.
2018; Saunders et al. 2019; Gissi et al. 2019). While other
novel marine management concepts, such as various
ecosystem-focused approaches (e.g. Ecosystem Services,
Ecosystem-based Management, etc.) have been slowly
adopted, MSP has rapidly attained a preeminent position with-
in marine governance discourses and practices (Toonen and
van Tatenhove 2013). The perceived neutrality and accessibil-
ity of MSP enables a range of actors to inscribe their values
onto it, increasing its appeal and simultaneously hiding the
role of power in shaping MSP processes. We argue that power
is exercised in MSP through the creation of specific
governmentalities that reflect the interests ofelite stakeholders
and co-opts others into believing that MSP will serve their
interests. By understanding how these governmentalities are
created we can resist them and recapture the radical and pro-
gressive potential of MSP.
The avid adoption of MSP is partially due to it being more
accessible to non-specialists than ecosystem-focused ap-
proaches, which have been critiqued for being exclusionary
and privileging specific forms of knowledge (Díaz et al. 2018;
Stefansson et al. 2019). Although MSP is often labelled as
another ecosystem-focused approach (Foley et al. 2010)itis,
in practice, less orientated towards environmental issues than
core ecosystem management concepts. We suggest that the
*Wesley Flannery
w.flannery@qub.ac.uk
Ben McAteer
bmcateer06@qub.ac.uk
1
School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University
Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-020-00174-2
/ Published online: 2 May 2020
Maritime Studies (2020) 19:269–284
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broad appeal of MSP is due to spatial planning appearing to be
a relatively value-neutral concept when compared to ecosys-
tem approaches, which may be perceived as having inherent
biases towards achieving environmental objectives. Spatial
planning appears to be more neutral and easier to
mobilise as a governace mechanism than, for example, an
ecosystem services approach. Dominant policy discourses
have also adopted asocial and apolitical framings to advance
MSP as an inherently “rational”means of achieving balanced
management in the future (Tafon 2018). The conceptual sim-
plicity, malleability and supposed rationality of spatial plan-
ning contribute to the broad appeal of MSP while masking the
fact that it is a complex socio-political activity. Although it
may be a familiar and relatively understandable concept, spa-
tial planning is rarely a neutral, unbiased process and should,
instead, be viewed as a power-laden arena wherein actors
compete to imprint their agenda on specific spaces (Tafon
2018,2019).
The simplistic framing of MSP as a neutral or win-win
process (see White et al. 2012) in dominant MSP discourses
is based on an uncritical engagement with the power dynamics
that shape space. With little attention paid to these dynamics,
MSP is advanced by its promotors as a transformative gover-
nance approach with the capacity to fundamentally change
how we govern the ocean (Ehler and Douvere 2009). MSP
promotors frame it as a mechanism that can reform marine
governance through the “rational organization of the use of
marine space”(Douvere 2008, p.766), without acknowledg-
ing that powerful interests and structures may prevent the
implementation of progressive transformations. The transfor-
mative narratives surrounding MSP largely ignore the inhibi-
tory role power plays in nullifying transitions or in unjustly
skewing transformations (Blythe et al. 2018; Kelly et al. 2018;
Bennett et al. 2019). Rather than acknowledging how power
shapes planning processes, MSP is framed by its most ardent
supporters as a rational and logical process that sits above
power (Flannery et al. 2019).
Inattention to power issues has diminished the capacity of
MSP to transform marine governance. Although it has been
rapidly adopted worldwide (Jay et al. 2013), there is a growing
body of literature illustrating MSP’s failure to deliver on its
transformative potential (Ritchie and Ellis 2010; Jones et al.
2016; Smith and Jentoft 2017; Smith 2018; Tafon et al. 2018;
Fairbanks et al. 2019). Many of these evaluations explicitly or
implicitly highlight power-related issues as critical deficien-
cies of MSP initiatives. Failing to address issues of power
within MSP has been blamed for, inter alia,maintaining the
agendas of dominant actors through the use of empty partici-
patory rhetoric (Ritchie and Ellis 2010; Smith and Jentoft
2017; Tafon 2018), the development of weak objectives that
fail to address critical marine problems (Jones et al. 2016;
Sander 2018) and the deployment of technocratic-
managerial and post-political forms of governance that favour
dominant or well-established interests (Flannery et al. 2018;
Smith and Jentoft 2017; Aschenbrenner and Winder 2019).
These evaluations raise questions about MSP’s capacity to
address long-standing governance issues, the fairness and le-
gitimacy of its participatory processes (Smith 2018; Tafon
2019; Kelly et al. 2019), and illustrate how it may not precip-
itate transformative governance and do little more than pre-
serve the status quo (Flannery et al. 2018).
MSP should not be dismissed as an inherently regressive
process as it has vast transformative potential. For example,
MSP can account for cumulative negative impacts on marine
ecosystems (Foley et al. 2010); address conflict and other issues
that have arisen from sectoral and fragmented marine gover-
nance and the industrialisation of the ocean (Ehler and Douvere
2009); and address the democratic deficit in marine manage-
ment (Flannery et al. 2018). What is clear from academic eval-
uations of MSP is that it has been implemented through prac-
tices that have stifled its transformative capacity. We urgently
need to (re)capture MSP’s radical possibilities before it loses all
claims to be a legitimate form of governance (Flannery et al.
2016). Although there are various critiques of MSP, many fail
to answer why it has not achieved its promise or to provide
alternative pathways through which it can realise its progressive
capacity (Fairbanks et al. 2018, Kelly et al. 2019;Tafon2019
being particularly notable exceptions). There is, therefore, a
fundamental need to critically assess how power is exercised
in MSP initiatives to advance practices that nullify its radical
and transformative capacity and, following Boucquey et al.
(2019), explore how MSP can be made different.
Drawing on Johnsen (2017), we view the introduction of
MSP as an attempt to redefine the state-environment-society
governance nexus. The introduction of MSP creates opportu-
nities for actors to reimagine this nexus. Although this nexus
is shaped by power, we argue that this power is not enacted
through explicit forms of domination but, rather, through the
creation of MSP governmentalities. Governmentalities are so-
cial processes that aspire to influence the actions, subjectiv-
ities, and behaviours of others to achieve desired ends without
recourse to repressive power (Huxley 2008).
Governmentalities are powerful processes through which ac-
tors seek to shape the actions, values or norms of free individ-
uals (Foucault 1982) to establish “the right disposition of
things, arranged so as to lead to a suitable end”(Foucault
2007 p. 96). Governmentality is not the coercive power
exercised by states and other powerful actors through domi-
nation, repression or other forms of violence, but is, rather, a
more deceptive and complex form of power. Foucault regards
power as being concerned with the “management of possibil-
ities”and is more about the capacity to “structure the
(possible) actions of others”than outright domination
(Foucault 2003, p.138). In this sense, governmentalities are
not solely regressive and can lead to progressive social and
environmental outcomes (Fletcher 2010). The influence of
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governmentality is often unnoticed, has unconscious impacts,
is taken for granted and can appear innocuous. The form of
power created by governmentalities relates to the regimes of
practices that are formed “by institutions, procedures, analy-
ses, and reflections, the calculations and tactics”that create the
“mentalities”that seek to shape how subjects think and act
(Foucault 1991b, p. 102). For example, the audit and eco-
accreditation culture in fisheries advances neoliberal
governmentalities that turn fishers into eco-entrepreneurs
with, sometimes, deleterious social and community conse-
quences (Foley et al. 2018;Bresnihan2019). By understand-
ing how these governmentalities are created we can resist
regressive forms of MSP and work towards more radical and
transformative approaches.
This paper develops and applies a framework for assessing
MSP governmentalities. Analysing power through a
governmentality lens does not seek to identify sources or lo-
cations of power, nor does it attempt to interrogate the legiti-
macy which underpins the execution of power (Dean 1999).
Rather, it is concerned with assessing the actual art and con-
duct of governing and identifying how regimes of practices
are established (Dreyfus and Rabinow 2014). We frame
governmentalities as consisting of three key components,
problematisations, rationalities and governance technologies,
and address common critiques of governmentality scholarship
by explicitly including time/space in our approach. The next
section develops our MSP governmentality analytical frame-
work. This is followed by an account of our study area, the
east coast of England, and our methodological approach. The
subsequent section presents key findings, illustrating
how MSP becomes de-radicalised during the planning
process, leading to a discussion of the MSP
governmentality in England and how it, and other
MSP processes, can be made different.
MSP governmentality
Through governmentalities, the actions of free subjects can be
guided or conducted, not by an omnipotent powerholder, but
via the establishment of different regimes of practices.
Regimes of practices are the combination of activities that
seek to address a problem in a specific way, without these
practices necessarily being part of formal programmes
(Stephan et al. 2013). For example, a regime of practice is
forming around marine conservation (Stafford and Jones
2019) that focuses attention on addressing individual behav-
iour (e.g. reducing consumption of single-use plastic) while
ignoring large-scale structural issues (e.g. reforming gover-
nance regimes, reducing consumption, etc.). These practices
are not explicitly part of formal governmental programmes
and are often being instilled through informal mechanisms,
such as media campaigns (Stafford and Jones 2019).
Regimes of practices seek to define governance problems
and their solutions and attempts to embed these as accepted
truths through the development of rationalities and governing
technologies that shape how actors behave. Governing, in this
Foucauldian sense, is understood as the creation of truths that
define problems, desired ends, and the procedures that will be
implemented to achieve them. These truths become embedded
in dominant regimes of practices so that the “chosen”option
appears to be the rational choice. The production and imple-
mentation of these truths are the fundamental mechanisms
through which governmentalities become established. This
occurs through three inter-related governance processes,
which form the core aspects of our analytical framework:
problematisations, rationalities, and technologies.
Problematisations
Within the governmentality perspective, governance is
viewed as a problematising activity (Rose and Miller 1992).
Governance problems are not self-evident truths but are so-
cially constructed through problematising processes.
Problematisation is the process of framing a phenomenon as
both a problem and as an object of governance (Hutter et al.
2014). Through the production of truths, problematisations
define who and what should be governed and how and by
whom it should be done (Dean 1999; Rose 1996;Lemke
2001). As such, problematisations do not simply represent
concrete contemporary issues, they refer to the creative work
that legitimises something as a problem in need of interven-
tion, while simultaneously creating the conditions under
which certain answers can be constructed (Lemke 2019). A
focus on the production of problems is not to deny that con-
temporary issues exist but, rather, acknowledges that these
have been framed in particular ways through the construction
of certain “truths”and that they should be viewed as both
current and historically contingent (Lemke 2019). For exam-
ple, Blue Growth governmentalities seek to problematise the
issue of stakeholder and sectoral conflict that arises from rap-
idly expanding maritime industries in ways that will not re-
strict this expansion or empower marginalised groups to resist
it (Barbesgaard 2018; Cohen et al. 2019; Schutter and Hicks
2019; Satizábal et al. 2020). Within these governmentalities,
conflict is often problematised as being a product of uncoor-
dinated, sectoral management approaches, not as a result of
industrial expansion itself. By problematising conflict in this
way, Blue Growth governmentalities frame the issue being
governed (conflict) as poor management and something to
be resolved by reforming the state’s approach (e.g. introducing
more integrated forms of management), justifying the contin-
ued expansion of marine industrialisation and largely ignoring
the urgent need for degrowth thinking in marine governance
(Hadjimichael 2018).
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Furthermore, problematisations produce fields of visibility
(Dean 1999) in the sense that they foreground certain aspects
of “reality”while hiding others, so that an issue becomes
governable in the manner that an actor desires (Taylor 2011).
For example, ecosystem services approaches can be used to
narrowly focus on “ecosystems that consist only of services
that already take the commodity form”(Robertson 2012,p.
397), reducing the complexity of human-environment rela-
tions to those that can be managed through a narrow range
of econometric methods. We also view problematisation pro-
cesses as being duplicitous, whereby several aspects may be
problematised as being equally important to solving an issue,
particularly to gain broad support, but only discrete elements
of the problematisation will be taken forward. For example, a
lack of stakeholder participation and poor data are often
problematised as concurrent and entwined issues to be re-
solved within MSP, yet there are examples of perfunctory
participation approaches being conducted in parallel with de-
tailed data collection processes (Flannery et al. 2018).
Rationalities
The strength of problematisations to dominate governance
issues is dependent on the rationalities that they deploy to
convince governance subjects about the veracity of their truth
claims. Analysing governmentalities enables us to understand
how actors both portray their framings of phenomena to other
groups and how they seek to shape the responses of these
groups (Hillier 2015). As actors are free to react to
problematisations as they see fit, problematisations must be
rationalised to them. Rationalities are the discourses that seek
to provide justifications (moral, ethical, scientific, etc.) for
specific problematisations (Rose and Miller 1992). To under-
stand governmentalities is, therefore, to see how actors govern
through the production of truth (Foucault 1991a). These truths
are asserted through claims of particular knowledge of the
problem to be addressed (e.g. knowledge of the economy or
the environment) to gain legitimate control over how issues
will be governed. By appearing to make issues knowable and
thinkable, truths are used to rationalise the governance of phe-
nomena in particular ways (Rose and Miller 1992). In China,
for example, economic rationality dominates discourses on
marine governance and justifies the rapid expansion of mari-
time industries (Choi 2017).
Although rationalities seek to provide justifications for
governmentalities they should not be viewed as transcendental
reasonings, even when they make moral or ethical claims.
Rationalities are not pure, neutral forms of knowledge or logic
that simply represent reality, but are, instead, socially pro-
duced rationalisations of problems and solutions (Lemke
2002). The power of rationalities functions through the crea-
tion of discourses that seek to justify specific actions through
truth claimsand/orthrough appeals to reason (Flyvberg 1998).
For example, rationalities related to the ill-defined notion of
the “public good”are often mobilised to justify controversial
or inequitable urban planning decisions that only benefit elite
actors (Murphy and Fox-Rogers 2015).
Rather than being unbiased reasonings for actions, rational-
ities are contingent on and influenced by, specific power rela-
tions (Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002). Although rationalities
are products of these power relations, they are not exercised
through explicit commands to action but seek to influence
conduct in more nuanced ways, predominantly by shaping
the discourse around an issue. The aim of these discourses is
to both legitimise specific governance actions and to render
“reality”governable in precise ways (Lemke 2002). For ex-
ample, geo-spatial rationalities are mobilised in MSP dis-
courses to reduce reality to uncomplex, asocial renderings that
make the marine environment appear governable through
mapping and zoning approaches (Smith and Brennan 2012),
often failing to capture complex socio-environmental aspects
of these areas (St. Martin and Hall-Arber 2008; Peters and
Steinberg 2019; Trouillet 2019).
Technologies
As they are discursive and focused on the politics of truth,
rationalities, in and of themselves, do not guarantee the achieve-
ment of specific governmental objectives. To be effective,
governmentalities must be successful in constructing the tech-
nical means to give practical effect to these rationalities.
Technologies are the material aspects of governmentalities
and refer “to the practices and devices through which political
rationalities are operationalized”(Merlingen 2011, p. 153).
Governance actors must use technologies if governmentalities
are to achieve their desired ends (Dean 1999). In other words,
problematisation and rationalisation discourses must be
materialised as practices (Lemke 2019). Governmentality tech-
nologies consist of programmes, calculations, techniques, ap-
paratuses, documents and procedures that seek to give effect to
governmental ambitions (Rose and Miller 1992). It is through
these technologies that problematisations and rationalities are
deployed (Rose and Miller 1992). For example, stakeholder
participation can be deployed as a technology to realise a gov-
ernmental aim of responsibilisation, wherein the state divests
itself of responsibility for addressing an issue, for example,
flooding, by “empowering”the public (Moon et al. 2017).
The relationship between rationalities and technologies al-
so flows in the opposite direction, with specific practices be-
ing rationalised as they emerge and their usefulness to
governmentalities becomes apparent (Dean 1999).
Technologies are both mechanisms that stabilise and enact
specific rationalities and are devices that reimagine policy
interpretations as they encounter reality and users (Rap and
Wester 2017). Technologies, therefore, have a double-sided
nature. Technologies function both to operationalise
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rationalities and become new components of
governmentalities that will also need to be rationalised as their
utility becomes apparent. Recognising the dual nature of tech-
nologies acknowledges that governance subjects are not pas-
sive actors and may repurpose technologies as they pass
through time/space.
Time/space
Some scholars analysing governmentalities have been cri-
tiqued for adopting instrumentalist and functionalist perspec-
tives (Rap and Wester 2017); assuming that programmes will
unproblematically achieve their desired effects (Dupont and
Pearce 2001) or that governmentalities are completed projects
(O’Malley et al. 1997); and for naively conducting research in
a manner that suggests that subjects unthinkingly respond as
desired to governmentalities (Rap and Wester 2017). The ap-
plication of Foucault’sapproachinthismannerisincorrect,as
it cannot be presumed that power always realises its ambitions
(McKee 2009). People are active subjects capable of resisting
or repurposing governmental technologies (Dupont and
Pearce 2001) and governmentalities can go astray when they
meet their target audience (Rutherford 2007).
To avoid these errors, it is important to recognise the cen-
trality of genealogy to the governmentality perspective, the
role that contingency plays in shaping governmentalities and
to acknowledge that they may change through time or when
they come into contact with different people or spaces (Lemke
2019). Furthermore, governmentalities should not be viewed
as linear progressions from problematisation to realisation (i.e.
that problematisations rest on the production of particular ra-
tionalities which leads to specific technologies). The relation-
ships between problematisations, rationalities and technolo-
gies are more complex than the direct transfer of an idea into
practice and it is important to recognise that governmentalities
change over time and as they transverse different spaces. For
example, the creation of governmentalities solely at a national
scale will seldom achieve their aims due to the spatial discon-
nect between national state governance mechanisms and
localised practices (Hannah 2000; Fairbanks 2019). To be
fully realised, the logic of governmentalities must, therefore,
cascade down through spatial hierarchies, often entailing the
development of new relationships between governmentality
components, and raising multiple opportunities for them to
be reformed, co-opted or challenged. Including a time/space
element in our analytical framework recognises that
governmentalities are not delivered as fully realised projects,
but are disputed, reformed, and recalibrated over time and are
unceasingly re-articulated through the most amenable chan-
nels (Rutherford 2007).
The alteration of governmentalities as they pass through
time/space should not be viewed narrowly as the dilution of
a programme as it comes into contact with reality, but, rather,
highlights that governmentalities may need to be realised
through a variety of strategies and adapted to diverse contexts
(Lemke 2002). Governmentalities take unpredictable courses
as they encounter “effective opposition and resistance to them;
the impact of unforeseen circumstances and mistakes; the out-
comes of struggles between conflicting interpretations and
unexpected contradictions”(Hutchinson and O’Malley 2019
p.71). Assessing the genealogy of governmentalities, there-
fore, focuses our attention less on the actual “control”of sub-
jects and more on the attempts to create the conditions to
control over time (Hutchinson and O’Malley 2019) while also
acknowledging that programmes are in a constant state of
becoming and are often resisted (Rutherford 2007).
Methodology and study site
We selected England as our case study as it is one of
the first countries to develop, implement and assess stat-
utory MSP.
1
English MSP is a good example through
which to explore how specific MSP governmentalities
arise. Like other early adopters, MSP in England has
been largely driven by the emergence of new spatially
fixed marine uses (e.g. wind farms), has been imple-
mented by a neoliberal government and entailed the
development of a new agency and new legislation.
The first plans in England were published by the Marine
Management Organisation (MMO) in 2014 and cover the
East Inshore and Offshore areas (see Fig. 1). The East Inshore
area spans the coastline from Flamborough Head to Felixstowe
and encompasses the sea area from the mean high-water mark
to 12 nautical miles. The East Offshore area extends from 12
nautical miles to the limit of the UK’s Exclusive Economic
Zone. The two plans were published together as The East
Inshore and East Offshore Marine Plans (HM Government,
2014) and are referred to from hereon as the East Marine Plans.
Our study consists of a thematic analysis of planning doc-
uments related to the development and assessment of these
plans. Focusing solely on documents as our data source allows
us to be faithful to Foucault’s governmentality approach,
wherein the aim is to identify attempts to create conditions
to control rather than to discover if control was exercised
(Hutchinson and O’Malley 2019). Based on the literature re-
view above, we adopted a deductive thematic framework,
consisting of problematisations, rationalities, and technolo-
gies, to analyse the East Marine Plans and associated docu-
ments. Documents analysed include the following: UK
Marine Policy Statement (DEFRA 2011); The East Inshore
and East Offshore Marine Plans (DEFRA 2014); Evidence
and Issues Overview Report (MMO 2014); Statement of
Participation (MMO 2015); Three-year report on the East
1
In UK policy and legislation MSP is referred to as marine planning.
273Maritime Studies (2020) 19:269–284
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Marine Plans (DEFRA 2017). We also analysed 35 speeches
made by ministers and government officials concerning these
plans or MSP in general (see Supplementary Material for a list
of all documents and speeches that were analysed).
To capture how MSP governmentality travels through
time/space, we divided the planning process into four distinct
phases: normative, strategic, operational, and monitoring
(Flannery 2011). We define the normative phase as mainly being
the early part of the planning process, and largely concerned
with defining the desired ends and the principles and ideals that
will be implemented to achieve them (Smith 1982). The norma-
tive phase is often related to the development of national-level
policies or programmes. The strategic phase focuses on selecting
an approach from the range of options that could be pursued to
achieve programme objectives (Smith 1982). The strategic
phase tends to be a mix of national and local level processes.
The operational phase centres around the implementation of the
selected strategy (Smith 1982) and is usually focused on the
local level. The monitoring phase focuses on assessing the suc-
cess, or otherwise, of a programme and can be either a national
or local level assessment, or a mixture of both. Each of these
phases represents a staging point in the planning process (see
Tab le 1for an example of these phases). We recognize that these
phases are difficult to delimitate and that planning processes
Table 1 Four phases of planning
Planning phases Normative Strategic Operational Monitoring
Primary focus of phase Define desired ends Choose the instruments to
achieve ends
Develop implementing
instruments
Assess progress
Fisheries management
example
Increased fish stocks is defined
as the desired ends
Decision made whether to
implement MPAs; reducethe
number of fishing licences; tax
fish products; etc. Decision
made to implement MPAs.
Portal for collecting MPAdata
produced; stakeholder
participatory methods rolled
out; final MPA designations
mapped and implemented
Monitoring
programme of fish
stocks implemented;
socio-economic im-
pacts of MPAs
assessed; etc.
Fig. 1 The East Inshore and Offshore planning areas
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may move back and forth between them or that sometimes two
of them may overlap or run in parallel, but they provide broad
temporospatial categories through which we can capture the
evolution of governmentalities.
Findings
Findings are presented below as they relate to each phase of
the planning process. During the normative phase, MSP is
portrayed as a radical and progressive approach that will have
broad societal and environmental befits. Our findings, howev-
er, illustrate that MSP becomes de-radicalised through a pro-
cess of re-problematising progressive rationalities and tech-
nologies as they move through the four planning phases. For
example, progressive rationalities (e.g. best available science)
and technologies (e.g. stakeholder participation) become re-
gressively problematised by the government at each subse-
quent planning phase, while neoliberal ambitions become
the main governance objects of the MSP governmentality.
As MSP moves through the planning phases, progressive re-
forms are managed out of the process by the government so
that, by and large, the status quo remains intact and the pro-
posed environmental and societal benefits become by-prod-
ucts, at best, of a neoliberal planning regime.
Normative phase: the need for radical
governance reform
Problematisations
During the normative phase, the state-environment-society
nexus is problematised by the government as requiring radical
transformation (DEFRA 2010). The state’s approach to ma-
rine management is pronounced as being inefficient, the envi-
ronment is framed as being under severe pressure, and society
is presented as insufficiently benefiting from the exploitation
of marine resources. Reforming the marine governance re-
gime is problematised by the government as a collective pro-
ject that will benefit all, particularly coastal populations and
marine industries, and enhance environmental sustainability.
The government’s broad problematisation of governance re-
form focuses on the ineffective nature of existing management
practices and how overhauling these will serve the interests of
the environment, communities and industry (DEFRA 2010).
The government frames the introduction of MSP as a way
for the state to address long-standing inefficiencies emanating
from sectoral and fragment governance approaches. For exam-
ple, the government advances the introduction of MSP as an
opportunity to address these issues through the development of
a radical new approach to marine management that will lead to
consistent decision-making (DEFRA 2010). The introduction
ofMSPisframedbyParliamentary Under-Secretary of State at
the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
Richard Benyon, as enabling better and more informed
decision-making and long-term spatial thinking:
we have the power to change the way we use our marine
spaces and resources, for now and for the future. To
make better, more informed and long-term decisions
on what we want in our seas, when and where
(Benyon 2010).
The marine environment is acknowledged by the govern-
ment as being highly pressurised, with this likely to increase in
the future and that this will need to be addressed through
improved management practices. Acknowledging increased
environmental pressure does not, however, lead the govern-
ment to problematise this issue in a manner that would limit
industrial expansion. As illustrated below, instigating better
management practices does not mean the government is seek-
ing to introduce plan-led development and a system of trade-
offs aimed at reducing environmental pressures. Instead, bet-
ter management here relates to reducing the bureaucratic bur-
den on industries, providing certainty for investors and speed-
ing up consenting processes (DEFRA 2011).
The government also seeks to problematise societal aspects of
the state-environment-society nexus during this phase, but this is
done in a vague manner. Society is framed as insufficiently
benefiting from the marine environment and maritime industry:
[Potential development] considerations must be inte-
grated with social considerations on equality, communi-
ty cohesion, wellbeing and health (DEFRA 2011,p.16).
During the normative stage, the government argues that all
those who havea stake inthe marine environment will have an
input into MSP (DEFRA 2011). Society is also being viewed
as a vital source of data and experience that can inform the
reimagining of the governance regime. The government,
therefore, attempts to position MSP as a means of both ensur-
ing society is a major benefactor of new marine development
and as a way of addressing the democratic deficit in marine
governance.
Rationalities
The government’s rationalities for reform are also very broad
and ambitious and appear to be mobilised to convince gover-
nance subjects that the government is adopting a radical ap-
proach to MSP. Concern for the environment and society are
used as central rationalities for reforming marine governance.
For example, one of the main rationalities underpinning re-
form of marine governance is that it will be informed by the
development of a rigorous evidence base:
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Our understanding of the marine environment continues
to develop through new scientific and socio-economic
research and data collection. Sound evidence and mon-
itoring underpins effective marine management and pol-
icy development (DEFRA 2011,p.12).
Despite acknowledging the severity of environmental pres-
sures, reforming the governance regime is framed as favouring
continued development and the introduction of MSP is prof-
fered by the government as a means of ensuring this is done in a
sustainable manner. By rationalising state reform through a sus-
tainable development lens, the government seeks to provide
legitimacy to continued industrial expansion:
Properly planned developments in the marine area can
provide environmental and social benefits as well as
drive economic development, provide opportunities for
investment and generate export and tax revenues. The
marine planning system will help to promote these ben-
efits in contributing to the achievement of sustainable
development. There will therefore be a presumption in
favour of sustainable development in the marine plan-
ning system (DEFRA 2011,p.16).
Although there are data gaps, MSP is advanced by the
government as a process through which these can be ad-
dressed. MSP is, therefore, rationalised as being both based
on best available science and also the process through which
any gaps in this knowledge will be addressed, suggesting that
a robust data gathering process will form part of the MSP
process (DEFRA 2011).
Technologies
Two technologies of implementing this governmentality are
initiated bythe government in the normative phase: stakehold-
er participation, and a focus on community well-being.
Meaningful engagement is construed by the government as
being a key planning principle, with a broad range of interests
viewed as contributing to the realisation of a more sustainable
marine future:
Marine planning will define the future uses of our seas
in any given area, with the full engagement of all those
interested in the marine environment, from local com-
munities to businesses (DEFRA 2010).
The documents produced by the government during the
normative stage also frame MSP as contributing to coastal
community well-being, equality, community cohesion, and
health (DEFRA 2011). As these documents are from the nor-
mative phase, they do not seek to actualise these technologies.
Instead, these documents should be viewed as the initiation of
the technologies that will become manifest in the later phases.
What we can note from these documents is that the technolo-
gies are ambitious and promise to deliver a range of social
outcomes from MSP but are also lacking specificity.
Strategic phase: defending the status quo
Problematisations
The socio-ecological rationalities and technologies mobilised
by the government during the normative phase would appear
to suggest that future industrial expansion would be tempered
by environmental protection and concerns regarding societal
issues. Historic planning practices, however, illustrate that
economic priorities tend to dominate “sustainable develop-
ment”processes (Wang et al. 2014). In our case study, the
emphasis on economic and neoliberal priorities becomes more
pronounced in each successive phase of the MSP process,
while the progressive elements become problematised them-
selves, or are framed as issues to be resolved in the future and
not as core elements to achieving sustainable development.
The dominance placed by the government on economic and
neoliberal priorities within the strategic phase is, therefore,
accompanied by efforts to depreciate the state’scapacityto
achieve environmental and social objectives.
During the strategic phase, the government problematises
the state-environment-society nexus in ways that erode the
radical approach to MSP mapped out during the normative
phase. The current management approach continues to be
framed by the government as being inefficient, but increasing
significance is placed on resolving efficiencies from a narrow
economic perspective, particularly reducing the “burden”of
regulation on industry. Concurrently, less emphasis is placed
on ensuring that a more efficient system delivers on progres-
sive elements (e.g. enhancing coastal well-being). In practice,
efficient marine governance becomes narrowly problematised
by the government to mean reforming the consenting regime
so that it is quicker, less “complex”and responds to the con-
cerns raised by industry (MMO 2014).
In contrast to the manner in which economic objectives
become more clearly defined, progressive elements such as
rigorous data collection, broad participation, well-being and
other benefits that should accrue to coastal communities, be-
come regressively problematised and minimised by the gov-
ernment in terms of their centrality to English MSP. For ex-
ample, society is problematised as being highly differentiated
in terms of its capacity to engage with MSP, with participation
being framed as burdensome to a portion of stakeholders and
that “some methods of engagement may not be appropriate for
all”(MMO 2015, p. 11). Engagement with stakeholders and
wider society is still framed by the planning agency as being a
core component of MSP, but that it will need to distinguish
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between the capacity of stakeholders to engage (MMO 2014).
This framing does not lead the government to instigate a
capacity-building programme with under-resourced and
overstretched stakeholders. Instead, stakeholder participation
becomes problematised itself and framed as something that
the government can do differently with various groups, ignor-
ing how this may benefit those with the most resources.
Similarly, in documents from the strategic phase, the govern-
ment acknowledges that there are concerns that coastal com-
munities may not benefit from further economic development
in the manner envisaged during the normative phase. This
issue is, however, problematised as being something that will
be addressed through evidence-gathering processes and re-
solved through MSP:
Economic benefits of marine development and where
they accrue is under scrutiny. Some forms of develop-
ment are seen as contributing little to economic
wellbeing at local level. This will be explored further
via our evidence gathering (MMO 2014,p.8)
Rationalities
During the strategic phase, the government’s rationality for
reforming the state’s governance approach mainly focuses
on the need to address “inefficiencies”in the existing regime.
The government rationalises the reformation of the consenting
regimes in terms of the certainty it will provide developers and
how the new system will aid them to defend their projects
against objections:
Marine users should also feel more confident that deci-
sions made on applications for projects will be robust in
the face of challenge, provided they are made in accor-
dance with marine plans (MMO 2015,p.3).
The government cannot be viewed as restructuring the ma-
rine governance system solely to benefit economic sectors,
and also seeks to rationalise reform by claiming that the cer-
tainty that will emanate from MSP will also enhance the well-
being of disadvantaged communities:
communities, including less well-off areas that will ben-
efit from economic confidence in sustainable develop-
ment (MMO 2015,p.5).
Replacing the existing system with MSP is rationalised by
referring to the robust data that will underpin the latter and by
claiming that it will mirror best practice from elsewhere.
During this phase, the MMO highlights the vast range of data
collected to date, the issues that have emerged, including ev-
idence gaps. The MMO rationalise this as being a robust
database on which to base MSP and that it can underpin the
next phase in the planning process:
we have drawn together the range of relevant evidence
but also, highlighted the issues that emerged from the
evidence. This should inform any discussion of key is-
sues and the next steps in the planning process –helping
us to establish a clear vision and objectives for the plan
areas (MMO 2014,p.3).
MSP is rationalised as being effective as it mirrors
England’s terrestrial planning systems, the best practice cre-
dentials of the latter being derived from the length of time it
has been in place (MMO 2015), rather than any claim to being
effective in delivering well-being or other benefits to disad-
vantaged communities. The fact that that their approach has
been developed through the international exchange of ap-
proaches in workshops with representatives from the
Netherlands, Belgium, France and the USA is also used by
the government to rationalise its effectiveness (MMO 2015).
Technologies
Enhancing well-being is again activated as a technology by
the government during this phase. We view the mobilisation
of a well-being narrative here as the emergence of it being
used as a co-option technology. Although “well-being”is
viewed as being a beneficial outcome of enhanced market
and investor certainty, the government does not add any spe-
cifics as to how this will be realised in coastal communities.
Similarly, the government technology of stakeholder partici-
pation is framed in less meaningful and impactful terms, mov-
ing towards more tokenistic forms of engagement, such as
information sharing, with the public and stakeholders having
potentially less direct input into the planning process (MMO
2015). Enhancing well-being and engaging in stakeholder par-
ticipation are, therefore, less technologies through which the
government will deliver progressive MSP objectives and
should, instead, be viewed more as co-option procedures that
seek to limit meaningful engagement and to convince gover-
nance subjects of the value of MSP.
Operational phase: do not rule Britannia!
Problematisations
During the operational phase, the government increasingly
problematises MSP through post-political framings, which
limit stakeholder engagement and the creation of new knowl-
edge and focuses on addressing neoliberal objectives.
Tenuous links are made to the radical reformation of marine
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governance envisaged in the normative phase, with progres-
sive objectives (e.g. enhancing coastal well-being) framed by
the government as being auxiliary goals that will be realised
by achieving economic objectives. Rather than reforming ma-
rine governance, the government seeks to cement a form of
MSP that focuses solely on the needs of industry and that
indirectly benefits the environment and society. The role of
the state in MSP moves from being problematised as needing
to be reformed to instigate good, environmental planning, to
being framed as needing to be transformed to reduce the bu-
reaucratic red tape faced by industries (DEFRA 2014).
The issue of coastal well-being, one of the key mechanisms
through which society is framed as benefiting from MSP, is
problematised by the government as an ancillary issue that
will be achieved through trickle-down economics and actions
in policy areas that are outside the MMO’s remit. For example,
enhancing coastal well-being is narrowly problematised by
the government as increasing employment opportunities for
coastal populations and, unlike the issue of red tape, no ac-
tions are developed to address this issue. Instead, vague
commitments are made about ensuring that employment
opportunities are created in communities adjacent to the
planning area:
the need to ensure that local people can access the jobs
being created in and adjacent to the East marine plan
areas. It is about helping people into work by supporting
development and other activities that create jobs at all
skills levels, connected to activities in the marine area
(DEFRA 2014,p.26).
In government documents concerned with the operational
phase, progressive elements of previous phases are
problematised as being difficult to achieve in these plans and
are pushed into the next iteration of the planning process. For
example, the use of best available science in the planning
process is problematised by the government as a lack of useful
knowledge and used to justify less prescriptive policies:
The Marine Management Organisation has collated the
best available evidence base to support the development
of marine plans, and the process has also highlighted
some clear gaps in knowledge (DEFRA 2014,p.19).
Gaps in the evidence base ... mean that these first marine
plans do not include specific spatial or resource alloca-
tions for some policies (DEFRA 2014, p. 11).
For most marine sectors, the lack of precise, locally rele-
vant policies means that the MSP process will have little im-
pact on how they are governed and planned. They will, pre-
dominantly, need to refer to national-level policies rather than
these plans for development guidance, something that has
been confirmed in interviews with key stakeholders in another
study (Clarke and Flannery 2019).
Rationalities
The focus on streamlining the licencing process is rationalised
in terms of the speed with which developments will be
realised, therefore contributing to the economy earlier than
they would have in the past (DEFRA 2014). Even though
the government recognises key knowledge gaps, the plans
are still rationalised in terms of the robustness of their evi-
dence base, which has been reviewed by the planning team
before being used in the planning process (DEFRA 2014).
Technologies
Issues with both the best available science and stakeholder
participation become technologies through which the govern-
ment can mobilise less prescriptive policies. Rather than MSP
being the process through which key data gaps and the dem-
ocratic deficit in marine governance will be addressed, the
government marshals these issues as governmental technolo-
gies that can ensure that MSP is less radical than originally
formulated. Acknowledging that these issues are not ad-
dressed within MSP is not framed as a policy failure by the
government. Instead, the government uses the cyclical nature
of planning as a technology of delay to push these issues into
the next iteration of the planning process:
many of the evidence gaps revealed in the East to date
also of relevance to other plan areas. This allows for new
evidence to be prioritised and commissioned based on
necessity and alignment to any key issues as they arise
(DEFRA 2014,p.26).
The lack of key data does not mean that the government
will adopt a precautionary approach, and a presumption in
favour of development is reiterated during this phase.
Furthermore, to ensure that this presumption is fully embed-
ded in the system, the government uses training as a technol-
ogy to ensure planners comply with this diktat:
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) will car-
ry out staff training to reinforce awareness of the
existing presumption in favour of sustainable develop-
ment (MMO 2013).
There is an attempt by the government to disguise the clear
economic, neoliberal focus of the East Marine Plans. Policies
that make insipid reference to increasing employment are used
by the government as well-being washing technologies. We
describe these polices as well-being washing as they contain
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no implementable actions and lack operational details. For
example, the plans contain a policy where “employment ben-
efit”will be the deciding factor when choosing between two
competing projects, yet no definition of this benefit is provid-
ed, nor does it contain guidance on how this will be measured
across projects (DEFRA 2014). The issue of enhancing coast-
al well-being is, therefore, deployed by the government as a
hollow technological procedure, with the aim of legitimising
their objectives through a process of well-being washing.
Monitoring: “consistent with anticipated
progress”
Problematisations
The monitoring phase consists of a very narrow review of the
plans’impact. There is no attempt by the government to in-
vestigate the unintended impacts of the plans and the review
focuses solely on how the plan is achieving its aims. In the
progress review, the government frames MSP as progressing
as planned and problematises the lack of robust data as the
core issue that needs to be addressed. The government reports
that data for key social and environmental policies are unavail-
able and that progress on these is unable to be assessed at this
time (DEFRA 2017). The robust evidence base that was
rationalised as underpinning the planning process is now
framed as a problem to be resolved in the next iteration of
the process.
Rationalities
The government does not, however, wish for the serious data
gaps, and the lack of a coherent strategy to address them, to be
read as a failure of the monitoring approach. Rather, the mon-
itoring approach is rationalised by the government as being
effective and efficient and as being recognised as one of the
best approaches in the world. For example, the monitoring
process is rationalised as being efficient as relatively little
new data were collected to monitor the progress of the plans:
To minimise duplication of effort and make the best use
of resources, monitoring drew primarily on other
existing environmental, social and economic monitoring
programmes, and data readily generated by the MMO
(DEFRA 2017,p.9).
Even though there are large evidence gaps, the govern-
ment’s approach to monitoring is rationalised as being robust
as it has been praised in two key reports, one of which was
commissioned by the MMO and highlights the need for coun-
terfactual assessments, which were not implemented in the
review process, and another that was published before the first
review was undertaken, which praised the proposed monitor-
ing approach to be adopted by the MMO:
The MMO’sapproachtomonitoringhasbeen
recognised as being among the more advanced exam-
ples of integrating [monitoring] considerations (DEFRA
2017,p.9).
Technologies
Community well-being and the iterative nature of planning
processes are again deployed by the government as convinc-
ing and delaying technologies to shape how the plans and
monitoring process will be received. Although enhanced
well-being cannot be directly attributed to the plans, nor is it
clearly defined in the review, the increased personal well-
being of those living in areas adjacent the plans was used as
a monitoring measure. Although the impacts of the plans on
this measure are unclear and indirect, at best, it is claimed as
being successfully achieved:
Wellbeing measures improved consistently from 2012
to March 2015 …Areas bordering the east marine plan
areas experienced consistently better personal wellbeing
than those of England generally. The effect of the East
Marine Plans is unclear as the baseline showed this pat-
tern before plans were adopted although direction of
travel of this indicator is consistent with objective intent
(DEFRA 2017,p.12).
The government mobilises the iterative cycle of the plan-
ning process as a technology to convince governance subjects
that things will be better in the future. For example, data to
measure progress on over 50% of the plans’objectives were
unavailable or insufficiently robust to report in the progress
review. Commitments to address these issues in the future,
such as the use of semi-structured interviews, are deployed
by the government to assuage concern about data gaps
(DEFRA 2014). No explanation is given, however, as to
why these strategies were not implemented during this review
when data gaps became apparent.
Developing progressive MSP
governmentalities
The issues to be addressed through MSP are not incontrovertible
truths but are, rather, socially constructed problems created and
propounded through specific and powerful governmentalities.
As can be seen in our case study, there are complex relationships
between the three core components of governmentalities, and it is
important to analyse the genealogy of governmentalities.
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Including a time/space dimension as part of the evaluation allows
us to understand how a governmentality changes (Lemke 2019),
how core components become altered, and where and how dif-
ference can be inserted into MSP processes. Although
problematisations are creative processes of framing an issue as
both a problem and as a governance object (Hutter et al. 2014),
our findings also illustrate their dissembling and duplicitous na-
ture. While a range of issues were problematised in the early
planning phase, only issues related to the neoliberalisation of
marine management were championed by the government
throughout the entirety of the process. It is recognised in the
literature that governmental technologies may need to become
rationalised as their utility to a governmentality becomes appar-
ent (Dean 1999; Rap and Wester 2017). Within our case study,
however, technologies from the early planning phase become
problematised in the later phases. In this way, the government
uses the cyclical and iterative nature of planning to problematise
progressive technologies, such as meaningful stakeholder partic-
ipation, that were mobilised to gain early support but needed to
be discarded to clear a pathway for narrow and neoliberal gov-
ernance reforms.
As will be discussed below, it is clear from our analysis that
the governmentality being advanced by the government takes
on different guises as it moves through the planning phases,
shedding progressive elements the closer it gets to
actualisation in the operational phase. As the governmentality
progresses through time/space, the problematisations, ratio-
nalities and technologies utilised by the government change
from those focused on progressive reform, to narrowly focus
on the instigation of a neoliberal form of MSP. The issues to be
addressed by the government through MSP shift from being
problematised as being about reforming the state’s approach to
marine governance so that it benefits all, to focus on reducing
the “bureaucratic burden”on industry. This goal is advanced
despite the government acknowledging the severe environ-
mental and spatial constraints on increasing development.
The goal of neoliberalising marine governance cannot, how-
ever, be advanced as the sole focus of MSP, particularly not
during the early phases wherein stakeholder and broader po-
litical buy-in are necessary. Instead, during the normative
phase, MSP is framed as a radical break with the previous
governance regime and a process which will ultimately insti-
gate good governance in the marine environment and enhance
coastal community well-being. The final governmentality that
emerges from our analysis, however, illustrates that the ulti-
mate, and perhaps only, goal is to instigate a pro-development,
neoliberal form of MSP that promotes further resource exploi-
tation through the reduction of the regulatory burden on ma-
rine industries. Whether instigating a neoliberal form of MSP
is the original aim of the architects of English MSP may be
debatable.As the process moves through each planning phase,
however, it becomes the overriding governmentality actioned
by the government.
Governmentalities are not, however, static or unchange-
able, and by understanding how they emerge we can explore
how they can be made different. Acknowledging the condi-
tional and malleable nature of governmentalities is central to
Foucault’s disruptive political vision, “because it highlights
the extent to which things could have been and thus can be-
come different”(Hutchinson and O’Malley 2019, p.71).
Identifying when and where in the planning process to insert
difference is critical to efforts to reimagine MSP (Boucquey
et al. 2016; Garland et al. 2019) and to developing progressive
governmentalities (Fletcher 2010). It is important, therefore,
to understand how to access each phase and how each one
presents different opportunities for governmentalities to be
resisted or reformed.
Drawing on Mouffe (2018), we argue that a political fron-
tier must be established during the normative phase of MSP
processes. This is critical to any attempt to reimagine MSP.
During the normative phase, governmentalities must seek to
win broad support so that they may progress to the next phase
without major alterations. As can be seen from our case study,
governmentalities do this by including high-level, progressive
problematisation of the status quo,thatappear to be
rationalised in apolitical terms and outline enlightened tech-
nologies that will deliver a programme of radical change. A
commitment to add detail and substance to these elements
during subsequent phases is too often used to co-opt those
seeking to radically reform inequitable regimes. Ultimately,
the iterative nature of planning is used to push the develop-
ment of these progressive elements into the next cycle of the
planning process. Although planning is an iterative process, it
rarely returns to the normative or strategic phases and tends to
get stuck in a path-dependent loop between the operational
and monitoring phases. For example, the commitment by the
government to collect new data after plan implementation
means that new knowledge may be incorporated into the next
iteration of the plan, but it is unlikely that this new data will
instigate a return to the normative and strategic phases.
Instead, the utility of any new data will be incorporated in a
path-dependent manner into the next version of the plans.
Inserting difference must, therefore, be instigated during the
normative phase.
Developing a political frontier during this phase must focus
on how to resist the slide of MSP into the post-political trap of
tokenistic participation (Flannery et al. 2018)andthe
technocratic-managerialism forms of governance dominated
by mapping, GIS, and data portals (Smith and Brennan
2012;Boucqueyetal.2016; Trouillet et al. 2019). Instead,
this frontier must serve as a means of inserting or applying
counter-hegemonic objectives or alternative imaginaries
(Walsh 2018) and developing clear pathways to societal and
environmental impact, to be activated in subsequent planning
phases. To be successful, this political frontier must
politicise the normative phase of MSP (Clarke and Flannery
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2019) and must result in the discussion and popularisation of
progressive alternatives (Mouffe 2018)toneoliberalMSP.
In the English MSP process, a clear pathway to impact
could have been developed for the objective of enhanced
coastal well-being. This could have provided detail on what
enhanced well-being would look like, how it would be mea-
sured and, most critically, the strategies and measurable ac-
tions that could be implemented to achieve it. In contemporary
planning practices, these details are to beadded as an initiative
progresses through the planning phases, providing opportuni-
ties for progressive goals to be problematised out of the pro-
cess. A political frontier in the normative phase must, there-
fore, provide resistance against efforts to move onto the sub-
sequent phases until clear pathways for achieving progressive
goals have been developed. We must fight the notion that
details can be added during subsequent phases and make later
phases about implementing clearly defined, progressive path-
ways, which would limit opportunities for the erosion oftrans-
formative goals.
The strategic phase is often inaccessible to the public
and is dominated by policy entrepreneurs, civil servants
and other powerful actors with the capacity to shape gov-
ernment actions. We must develop the capacity to give
voice to those excluded from this phase. Researchers and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have a particular
role to play in ensuring that progressive elements of MSP
(e.g. participation, well-being, robust evidence) are not
problematised out of MSP processes and that they resist
the need for planning to happen quickly. Speed and the
need for momentum are requirements of capital (Harvey
1985) and are often used by governments to justify hasty
decision-making, which tends to reproduce neoliberal he-
gemonies. During the strategic phase, researchers, NGOs
and others must act as advocates (Saunders et al. 2019)for
those unable to access decision-making spheres and focus
on ensuring that technologies to deliver progressive change
are enhanced rather than eroded. In the English MSP ex-
ample, advocate planners, researchers and others could
have been mobilised to resist government efforts to imple-
ment tokenistic stakeholder engagement processes and to
make the process more meaningful to marginal groups.
The value of participation must be reviewed and enhanced
throughout the MSP process (Quesada-Silva et al. 2019).
There is often limited scope for drastic programme change
during the operational phase. This is the point in the process
where governmentalities meet reality. Although it is often the
phase which appears most open, participation during this
phase is often tokenistic, with very little change being
achieved in terms of policies and objectives. Paradoxically,
this is often the phase where non-elite stakeholders become
most interested in planning processes, as it becomes clearer to
them how they will be impacted by plans (Flannery et al.
2018). Non-elite engagement at this point tends to elongate
the planning process but rarely changes its overall direction.
During this phase, difference can be inserted by challenging
attempts to undertake planning with insufficient data, and also
including data from marginalised groups in the process. For
example, local ecological and spatial knowledge can be used
by activists to give voice to non-elite stakeholders (Murray
et al. 2008; St. Martin and Olson 2017). Government efforts
to move progressive MSP elements into the next iteration of
the process must be resisted, avoiding negative path-
dependent objectives being replicated across iterations.
The monitoring phase is often very closed and usually only
accessible to civil servants, government party apparatchiks
and key policy influencers. Research that monitors MSP ca-
pacity to deliver progressive change must be developed by
those not privileged with access to, or co-opted into, formal
monitoring processes. Researchers developing broader ap-
proaches to monitoring should also focus on assessing the
unintended impacts of plans and finding pathways for their
assessments to be incorporated into the next iteration of plan-
ning processes. Given the desire to accelerate MSP globally
(see, for example, the joint UNSECO EU MSP Global pro-
gramme), research on the impacts of MSP in early adopting
countries must be undertaken quickly by researchers, and al-
ternative mechanisms for realising progressive societal and
environmental outcomes should be developed in conjunction
with local actors in countries that are just beginning their MSP
processes.
MSP contains vast transformative potential, including the
possibility of shifting from a sectoral to a place-based ap-
proach and the capacity to reduce the democratic deficit in
marine governance. Neoliberal and conservative
governmentalities have, however, steered it towards preserv-
ing the status quo and narrowly achieving economic objec-
tives. Understanding how these governmentalities develop
and recognising opportunities in planning processes where
they can be resisted, is critically important to developing a
more radical form of MSP. This understanding must be devel-
oped quickly by those interested in advancing progressive and
radical forms of MSP and implemented before it loses all
credibility as a transformative process.
Acknowledgements Wesley Flannery's contribution to this paper was
partly funded by the FAIRCoast project which is funded by the
Research Council of Norway, project number 294799.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adap-
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