Re-reading marine spatial planning through Foucault, Haugaard and others: an analysis of domination, empowerment and freedom

ABSTRACT

Marine spatial planning (MSP) has emerged as a radical approach to achieving sustainable development objectives at sea. While critics challenge its avowed radicalness, often through highlighting dominative processes, more insidious mechanisms of restricted agency remain under-elaborated, as are the productive power and potential of planning. This paper offers a more robust and balanced reading of MSP/power. First, drawing on Haugaard, we read MSP as providing actors with dispositional power to act in concert, thus entailing a move from the risks of ‘resource rush’ to structuring, which facilitates predictability and promotes agency. However, MSP’ing may also restrict agency when (1) powerful actors misuse opportunities for concerted action to pursue sectoral goals; (2) planning fantasies and the planner’s cognitive limitation sustain dominative power-relations; and (3) in setting the boundaries of MSP, bias is mobilized in favor of vested interests. We thus deploy Foucault’s notion of freedom, to analyze the relationship between ‘steering’ and resistance subjectivities, and his concept of parrhesias to consider to what extent, an ethico-political planner may contribute towards more equitable processes and outcomes. We conclude that besides the planner, the state as the ultimate authority in MSP must intervene substantively to minimize differentials in the distribution of actors’ social resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Marine spatial planning
• agency
• empowerment
• domination
• Foucault and Haugaard

Introduction: Marine Spatial Planning – From conformist to critical Research

Marine spatial planning (MSP) began some 40 years ago in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Although it was initially introduced as a management approach for nature conservation (Ehler & Douvere, 2009), the UNESCO technical report, Visions for a Sea Change in 2007 propelled MSP into international prominence as an evidence-based decision-making approach to deliver good environmental status of the seas and enhance maritime productivity, while securing social objectives. These sustainability objectives are to be achieved through the participatory allocation and analysis of human activities across time and space. MSP is also advanced as a means to achieve cross-sectoral, rational and harmonious spatial patterns of sea use that are supported by legislative and institutional arrangements (Jay et al., 2013).

In its early years, MSP received a fanfare-like salute, as proponents conceived it to be a radically novel and proactive approach to dealing with the inadequacies of earlier management regimes. The early scholarship was largely descriptive in orientation and promotional of MSP as an approach capable of delivering ecosystem-based solutions to the marine problem, while effectively mediating and resolving user conflicts at sea. Focus was thus either on describing the institutional, organizational and legislative arrangements necessary to reach these objectives, or on furnishing planners with step-by-step guidelines and methodologies (see Agardy, Di Sciara, & Christie, 2011; Douvere, 2008; Gilliland & Laffoley, 2008; Juda, 2007; Pomeroy & Douvere, 2008).

The upshot is that in the early years of MSP’ing (verb form), the underlying assumptions and rationales of this avowedly radical governance regime, including its systems of inclusions and exclusions were not subjected to sufficient scrutiny. Notable exceptions include contributions by Peel and Lloyd (2004), St. Martin and Hall-Arber (2008), Ritchie and Ellis (2010) and Gopnik et al. (2012) who approached MSP both as socially constructed and imbued with power asymmetries.

Interestingly, heeding the call for a ‘critical turn’ in MSP research (Kidd & Ellis, 2012), the conformist descriptivism that characterized early research was soon muted by a second-generation scholarship that attempted to examine the realities of MSP’ing against the conceptual promises of the policy. Critics now both challenge the post-political condition of MSP (Tafon, 2018) and question if planning can truly balance social and environmental goals with what seems to be a predominantly growth focused marine governance regime (Flannery, Clarke, & McAteer, 2019; Tafon, 2019). Indeed, rather than uncritically accept that MSP is ‘an idea whose time has come’ as earlier asserted by Gilliland and Laffoley (2008, p. 787), scholars now make reservations such as: ‘Still, there is a need to be cautious’ because while MSP may appear as a win-win arrangement, the powerless ‘risk being ignored in the planning process’ (Jentoft & Knol, 2014, p. 12). Likewise, the metaphors of ‘a slow train coming’ by Gilek, Saunders, and Stalmokaite (2018, p. 20) and ‘qui bono’ by Flannery et al. (2016) speak to insufficient attention paid to issues that appertain to social sustainability, including, distributive justice and equity, as well as differentials in the distribution of social resources (Saunders, Gilek, & Tafon, 2019).

A key argument in the critical scholarship is that all social practices constitute systems of power struggles and contested discourses – and despite its multiple promises, MSP is no exception. As planners struggle to grapple with this fundamental undecidability, power is fast becoming the operative concept of critical analyses of MSP (Flannery et al., 2016, 2018, 2019; Jentoft, 2017; Jones, Lieberknecht, & Qiu, 2016; Smith & Jentoft, 2017; Tafon, 2018, 2019; Tafon, Howarth, & Griggs, 2019). In fact, drawing on planning/power theory, these critics cast serious doubts on the assumed radicalness of MSP. For these critics, MSP’ing around the world will ultimately result in socially-regressive outcomes, which are seen as resulting from the tendency to distinguish between and prioritize ‘expert’ ecological knowledge over local experiential knowledge, as well as from the urge to roll out planning on an uneven field (often through window-dressing participation). Others (e.g. Kidd & Shaw, 2013, 2014) have also observed that planning the sea in isolation from land-based considerations may adversely affect functionality and efficiency. While the latter concern does not deal explicitly with power, an empirical analysis of land-sea social relations reveals subtle and often institutionalized power asymmetries that exist between different marine stakeholders (see Tafon et al., 2019, Tafon, 2019).

Notwithstanding the entry of the concept of power in MSP research, participants in the MSP power debate are still to come to terms with the multi-dimensional and relational character of power. Indeed, impassioned by the need to shed light on both potential and actual power imbalances in MSP, including their material and symbolic effects, critics tend to fall prey to a few misgivings that are common among many newly minted students of power. First, they predominantly think about power as restricting agency.¹ Various signifiers of zero-sum power (e.g. post-politics, exclusions and inclusions, winners and losers, stakeholder tyranny, etc.) have thus been canvassed to hammer out this point. Second, even when power is conceived as negative, more insidious mechanisms of restricted agency tend to escape the analytical gaze of critical scholars. Finally, because power is conceived predominantly as negative, both the productive power of planning and the mechanisms for transforming dominative power relations remain undertheorized and underexamined.

Aim and structure of paper

This paper aims to offer a more robust and balanced analysis of the different mechanisms of power in MSP, while generating possibilities to transform the governance regime into a more socially just and equitable practice. To do this, we bring debates on power (as grounded by Robert Dahl, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, Steven Lukes, Mark Haugaard and Michel Foucault) into fruitful dialogue with MSP. We start from the premise that for the concept of power to have sufficient critical bite and transformative potential in MSP, scholars must not only be specific about what mechanism of power they are questioning and why they are doing so, but they must also identify and evaluate alternatives. For us, a fruitful start consists first in rediscovering the various mechanisms through which MSP both restricts and promotes human agency and second, in exploring how actual mechanisms of dominative-power relations can be minimized so that MSP’ing can potentially produce equitable outcomes. Drawing on concepts from what as become known as the four dimensions of power, we thus emphasize the multi-dimensionality and relationality of power and explore the implications of this for individual and collective agency, planning accountability, and equity.

These issues are reflected in the structuring of our paper. The next section briefly clarifies what we mean by the multi-dimensionality and relationality of power/planning and introduces how these are examined in the paper. We then introduce the four dimensions of power and exemplify how each has been treated or may be manifest in MSP as domination. Then follows a substantive section that draws mainly on Foucault’s historical analysis of a particular form of freedom – parrhesias – as well as on Mark Haugaard’s reading of empowerment and habitus, to discuss (1) how MSP empowers differently positioned social actors with dispositional capacity, (2) how the reproduction of MSP and the structures within which it is embedded empowers actors with oppositional power and (3) how transformative change can be brought to bear on MSP, both procedurally and structurally.

Power/planning: operationalizing multi-dimensionality and relationality

By multi-dimensionality, we refer primarily to the different mechanisms of restrictive power, while by relationality, we refer to the mutual and interdependent relationship between restrictive and positive forms of power. Here, we first argue that dominative-power in planning is possible only insofar as it is parasitic upon power as empowerment, or the dispositional capacity to get things done in concert, which in and of itself constitutes the very condition of possibility of MSP. Furthermore, we argue that power can only be exerted over free subjects – that which makes power a relationship as such (Foucault, 1982). In this relational configuration, our task therefore consists in exploring the fields of possible actions that the Foucauldian ‘conduct of conduct’ may generate, the source of which can be agentive or structural, or both.

Thus, by emphasizing the relational character of power we (1) show how through the reproduction of structures, MSP and the structures within which it is embedded may empower various social actors and, (2) how power at various levels of planning does not only restrict agency but may also effectively promote collectivity. In the latter sense, we challenge the planner to practice the Foucauldian parrhesiastic game – to exercise self-restraint and ‘social competence’ as a means to liberate weaker actors, which we argue, is a habitus expectation of legitimate power over or authority. However, acknowledging the limits of the planner’s power, particularly given that she operates in a system marked by broader forces and power differentials, we propose that the intervention of the state as the ultimate enabling authority in MSP is indispensable for the new governance regime to be experienced as a progressive force. This entails minimizing differentials in the distribution of social resources for various actors.

Domination in marine spatial planning

In discussing power in this section, we shall both exemplify how they are approached as domination in the MSP literature (where such data are available) and consider their applicability in MSP (where such data are absent).

One-dimensional power

Power in the one-dimensional (1-D) view (also called visible power) was formulated by Robert Dahl to analyze the power structure of New Haven. Dahl (1957) argued that power was dispersed among differently-positioned elites in New Haven in ways that no single group controlled all the key resources. Importantly, 1-D power is evident in situations of observable conflict. It highlights how different interest groups in any given democratic sphere strive for the prevalence of their arguments and interests.

In the MSP context, visible power can be studied at various lower-order decision-making instances, including different stages of stakeholder consultation (e.g. stakeholder selection and draft plan commenting processes), as well as extra-planning arenas (e.g. appeals courts) in cases where planning results in stalemates. In these arenas the 1-D power analysist typically analyzes decisions that prevail to determine which actors wield power and through what mechanisms. However, observable conflicts in certain arenas (e.g. the media) do not necessarily end in decisions, so that recourse to prevailing decisions as a criterion for determining who wields political power becomes invalid. In such circumstances, the study of observable conflict tells us more about differentials in the social power/resources of various actors than their political leverage. That said, visible power and the inclusions and exclusions that it often entails has been empirically studied in various planning contexts, including in Estonia (Tafon et al., 2019), in Scotland (Smith & Jentoft, 2017), in the US (Flannery, Healy, & Luna, 2018) and across Europe (Jones et al., 2016). It is found that far from being a performative and iterative practice that is attentive to demands raised in-process, MSP’ing in these cases looks more like inter-sectoral negotiations between powerful actors and thus functions predominantly to reach predefined national objectives. Such outcomes are the consequence not only of in-process stakeholder tyranny, but also of broader biases in the organizational rationales and infrastructures of participation (Metzger, Soneryd, & Linke, 2017), which pertain to power in the two-dimensional view.

Two-dimensional power

The one-dimensional view of power is relevant only to the extent that it enables the analysis of observable conflict. Yet, power can be hidden and thus largely removed from the realm of observability. Here, we are dealing with power in the two-dimensional (2-D) conceptualization. 2-D power is exercised through the organization of potentially controversial issues out of debate, and presumably less contentious ones into politics. It was famously theorized by Bachrach and Baratz (1962) thus: ‘A devotes his energy to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration only of those issues that are comparatively innocuous to A’ (p. 948). Seen thus, 2-D power describes ‘non-decisions’ or prevailing procedures and values through which decision-making is constrained, and bias is mobilized in favor of vested interests. Non-decisions are effective in that they keep conflicts at bay or from arising in the first place.

In the critical MSP scholarship, 2-D power has been studied in two fundamental ways. First, there are mixed impressions about whether MSP is committed to ‘soft’ or ‘strong’ sustainability (Qiu & Jones, 2013). In the ‘strong’ camp, it is suggested that at the European Union policymaking level, environmental organizations were successful in influencing the formative discourse of MSP, which has resulted in the establishment of strong legislations that promote the achievement of Good Environmental Status for Europe’s seas (Calado et al., 2012). In the ‘soft’ camp, most commentators argue that offshore wind energy (OWE) and other renewables constitute the main driving force behind different national MSP initiatives. Here, while renewables have positive climate change-related effects, critics argue that rather than genuine concerns to protect the marine environment, it is the desire to maximize blue growth opportunities that drives these several MSPs (see Flannery et al., 2019; Gopnik et al., 2012; Jones et al., 2016; Smith & Jentoft, 2017; Smith, Maes, Stojanovic, & Ballinger, 2011; Tafon et al., 2019). In this line of thought, it is found that key governmental sectors (e.g. national defense) are endowed with strong veto power over the direction of planning, with local governments having little or no say – which also raises skepticisms over the ability of MSP as a system to harmonize socio-ecological interactions along a land-sea continuum.

For instance, in the Estonian MSP context, planners failed to give serious weight to objections raised by local municipal actors with regard to perceived adverse effects of a proposed OWE plan on activities on land (Tafon et al., 2019). Furthermore, Smith and Jentoft (2017) note that in Scotland, local communities were not invited to the country’s first stakeholder consultation, which was held in 2010 as a single ‘joint workshop’. This key workshop, they argue, resembled ‘a cross-sectoral approach and not a “public process”’ (p. 37). The absence of local communities and the predominance of maritime industry actors in this meeting is explained by the fact that the key values and priorities that were considered at this early workshop had already been framed and sedimented at a higher level of agenda-setting space – during the UK High level Maritime Objectives meeting that led to the UK Marine Policy Statement. Seen from the perspective of 2-D power, the organization of bias in MSP is compatible with John Gaventa’s typology of elite decision-making spaces as ‘closed spaces’. Closed spaces are those spaces where exclusive actors deliberate behind closed doors to which access is denied to those deemed outsiders to this elite group (Gaventa, 2006).

Besides denouncing organizational biases that favor environmental, economic and national security interests, the epistemological basis of MSP constitutes a second way through which 2-D power has been studied. Critics argue that the MSP régime du savoir Foucault (1982) – i.e. the way knowledge is framed and produced and how it circulates – ultimately constitutes power. Foucault (1982) argued that, ‘[e]very relationship of power puts into operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and its results’ (p. 792). It follows from this that, the binary separation of knowledge into ‘scientific’ and ‘local’ is not only arbitrary (Nursey-Bray et al., 2014) but is in and of itself an act of power (Flannery et al., 2016, 2019; Jentoft, 2017) whose effect is also power – the former shapes relations at lower-order processes. Indeed, because ‘truth and reason [are] defined by just one dominant rationality that privileges the implementation of universal theory over local action’ (Gunder, 2003, p. 237), the binary distinction between scientific and local knowledge, which often privileges techno-managerial expertise over place-specific phronesis or local experiential knowledge may not only be counterproductive to the MSP ambition of knowledge coproduction and integration, but may also function to suppress place-specific truths and subjectivities. As Flyvbjerg and Richardson (2002) warn, it is precisely those systems which have ‘treated practice as social engineering, i.e. as an epistemically derived techne, that become most repressive’ (p. 54).

For weaker stakeholders like small-scale fishers, as well as marine users whose values (e.g. cultural, aesthetic, recreational or spiritual) are not easily quantifiable and calculable through mainstream epistemically-derived methodologies, the privileging of various geo-technologies over phronetic or local collectively-generated knowledge may contribute to herding their participation towards the realization of narrowly determined outcomes (St. Martin & Hall-Arber, 2008; Tafon, 2018; Trouillet et al., 2019). For these users, MSP may very well be perceived as an instrument that facilitates ocean grabs and spatial marginalization. Here, rationality may mainly serve to rationalize and normalize subjugation (Flyvbjerg, 1998), often in the name of an arbitrary ‘due process’. For instance, in the Estonian planning controversy highlighted above, residents and local municipal actors challenged the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) report that was conducted as part of the MSP for being overly simplistic and void of content. However, the Hiiumaa Environmental Board, planners and two appeals courts alike approved and legalized the SEA on the basis that by definitional fiat, SEAs are only indicative and as such are not required to be detailed either of the possible adverse effects of proposed developments or of planned measures to minimize them (Tafon et al., 2019) – although, as we shall subsequently discuss, the Supreme Court would later invalidate the decisions.

Three-dimensional power

The 3-D view of power (also called invisible power) results from Lukes (1974) dissatisfaction with 1- and 2-dimensional views, which he characterized as highly behaviorist. By behaviorism, Lukes was critiquing both the limits of conceptualizing power as the conscious and intentional acts of agents, and a resultant overemphasis on the potentiality of covert or overt conflicts. Second, by emphasizing grievances and alternative policy choices that have been procedurally or structurally managed out of politics, Lukes noted, we tend to miss the point that it is not always the case that the powerless will resist dominating practices or decisions. Lukes was primarily interested in the inactions of those whose interests are harmed. Central to inaction is ‘false’ consciousness – which has been widely critiqued for its problematic benign paternalist connotation. Lukes submitted (albeit without clarity as to how ideology ‘sticks’) that the internalization of deep-seated ideologies both shapes people’s preferences and results in the unconscious acceptance of the naturalness of things, including modes of domination.

The implications of ideology on stakeholder subjectivities is a terrain that MSP scholars are yet to venture into. In considering ideology, scholars often limit themselves to a ‘thin’ understanding in which they emphasize the assumptions and rationalities that underlie and shape MSP practice – be they its epistemological basis, its post-political underpinnings, or its institutionalized rules of engagement. However, as we have seen in the previous section, what the analysis of these mechanisms of rationality-as rationalization (Flyvbjerg, 1998) reveal is how bias is organized in favor of vested interests and as such, pertain more to hidden (2-D) power than to invisible (3-D) power.

Nonetheless, ideology in its ‘thick’, affective dimension can be understood through analyzing how subjects of ‘lack’ may identify with certain fantasmatic narratives that are inherent in policy discourses. For instance, drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory for conceptual insights, Tafon (2018) teases out how the construction of the marine ‘problem’ in the European Union – through beatific and horrific narratives – potentially forecloses alternative interpretations for stakeholders and thus, creates a particular variety of problem-solving subjects. These are docile subjects who, by virtue of being ontologically incomplete subjects – hence the expression subjects of lack – do not only fail to question the predominantly economic rationale that drives MSP, but importantly, have become ideologically complicit in acquiescing to, and sustaining a neoliberal growth and managerialist MSP agenda. In short, subjects who are interpellated by and invest in the epistemological sanctity of ‘balancing’ and ‘integrating’ social and environmental goals with the economic imperatives of MSP (Tafon, 2018, pp. 268–270). Importantly, the idea that planning has a fantasmatic character suggests that planners too may also be implicated as rule-following subjects. As Van Assche, Duineveld, and Beunen (2014) note, planners operate in a terrain of ‘a planning ideology that sustains itself by excluding reflection on the power structures upholding it’ (p. 2394). It is precisely because of this restrictive effect of the power of planning on planners’ agency that Friedmann (1971) called on planners to be reflective both of their practice and of their cognitive limitations (p. 251). However, if and when planners become aware of power differentials between various stakeholders, it may be easier for them to take refuge behind the claim of a ‘neutral planner’ than to strive to address the issue of elite capture. Yet, as Long (1959) notes, ‘[p]urity from politics has a consequent sterility’ (p. 168). We take Long’s notion of sterility to mean a sterility vis-à-vis the self – the planner – which may lead to the further marginalization of weaker actors and their potential transformation into ‘enemies’.

Below we deploy the Foucauldian subjectification, or the idea of being tied to a self-knowledge, to explore how sterility of the self may function to further sustain underlying ideologies of planning.

Four-dimensional power

In its four-dimensional (4-D) form, dominative power is conceived as subjectification or the social formation of ‘normalness’ in subjects, often through socialization, habitus or discipline. In 4-D power it is the subject who subjugates him/herself either through being tied to his/her own identity by a self-knowledge or through submitting to someone’s control. It is a form of power:

which categorizes the individual, marks him by his own identity, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a truth on him … It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects … subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to (Foucault, 1982, p. 781).

Here, the human subject is transformed into an object of knowledge/study so that she not only becomes aware of her ‘visibility’, but as a consequence, starts to discipline and observe herself through the eye of the observer (Haugaard, 2012, p. 48).

4-D power has far-reaching implications for MSP, in terms of both democracy and stakeholder subjectivity. However, when thinking about powerlessness in planning, the tendency in the MSP literature is to emphasize how planning processes marginalize those weaker actors whose activities are planned. Yet, from a 4-D perspective, subjectification encompasses various decision-makers, be they planners in the lower-order planning process, or appeals judges when planning disputes are brought before them.

In theorizing agency, Foucault explicitly linked the subject with specific qualities – knowledge, competence, and qualification – which an authority agent is required to have (Foucault, 1982, pp. 780–781). Equipped with these qualities, authority agents in MSP have a duty to engage in what Foucault calls ‘immediate’ struggles. When they engage in ‘immediate’ struggles ‘they look not for the ‘chief enemy’ but for the immediate enemy’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 780). That is, they seek not to criticize broader structures of inequalities, but rather to address their own submission to a self-knowledge or to someone else’s control. This entails questioning taken-for-granted knowledge and the rules and norms guiding their routine practice. By so doing, it follows, planners can potentially safeguard the values and interests of weaker stakeholders. Without self-critique, these agents are nothing but passive, unqualified or ‘incompetent’ functionaries. They are incompetent because they have refused to look for ‘the immediate enemy’; to discipline themselves; to attack ‘the “government of individuation”’: that form of power which subjugates them and makes them nothing but ‘subjects’ of scientific, administrative, economic and ideological state violence (Foucault, 1982, p. 781). In such a case, one may say that the normalness of the planner (i.e. her ‘disciplined’, rule-following subjectivity) constitutes normatively reprehensible power, inasmuch as her quietism reinforces existing power imbalances and has adverse effects on the participation, knowledge, lifestyles and livelihoods of less powerful stakeholders. For Foucault, lack of self-reflectivity places the rule-following subject more or less ‘in the same situation as a slave to the extent that he or she cannot take part in the political life of the city’. In short s/he ‘is deprived of parrhesia’ (Foucault, 1983, p. 5) – the ability to speak truth to power. We shall revisit this when we consider freedom.

Empowerment and freedom in marine spatial planning

Thus far, we have discussed how through different mechanisms/dimensions, power works as domination in MSP. Yet, power also induces, seduces, produces goods and things and makes easier (Foucault, 1982). In what follows, we emphasize the productive power of planning, beginning with empowerment and then charting our way through and uncovering the field of possibilities that planning/power opens. While the emphasis on empowerment and freedom does not preclude relations of domination, in analyzing them we follow Foucault and bracket zero-sum relations to highlight the mutual and interdependent relationship between domination, empowerment and freedom.

The term “power” designates relationships between partners (and by that I am not thinking of a zero-sum game but simply, and for the moment staying in the most general terms, of an ensemble of actions which induce others and follow from one another) (Foucault, 1982, p. 786).

MSP as empowerment

The view that power over is predominantly oppressive has been widely challenged, most notably by Haugaard (2012, 2015) who notes that power over also constitutes normatively desirable power to or with, otherwise known as dispositional and concerted power – both of which entail empowerment à la Hannah Arendt. Here, empowerment derives from the simultaneous role of social structures as constraining and enabling. Importantly, constraint is not conceived negatively, but as a shared understanding of problems and a common commitment to action. Understood in terms of a shared commitment, social actors share a common interpretive horizon, which is the source of normatively felicitous power to (or collective agency) and the planner’s power over various participating stakeholders (consensual agency). Put otherwise, the relationship between constraint and disposition is dialectical so that through their shared interpretive horizon (in terms of what is at stake, what needs to be done, and how) social actors are committed to act in concert. In doing so, they do not only reproduce structures, but structural reproduction also empowers them with further dispositional capacity (Haugaard, 2003, 2012).

In relation to MSP, despite coming to the table with conflicting interests à la 1-D power, stakeholders are nonetheless collectively committed to perform a common structural act of planning, which also contributes to the reproduction of MSP as a system, including its various components (e.g. participatory planning and the structural role of the planner), as well as the structures within which MSP is embedded. Conversely, the absence of a collective commitment to plan various sea uses would entail zero power for the planner since what constitutes the ring of reference of her power is not simply her belief in her power per se but the consensual agency that various stakeholders confer on her as a function of their shared interpretive horizon, which is their validation of her authority as such. Furthermore, the absence of a shared interpretive horizon would also entail either a centralized system of management or worse, an open commons-type situation – ‘Ruin is the destination towards which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interests in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968, p. 1244).

Conceived thus, concerted power to and with entails a move from the possibilities of ‘resource rush’ and open conflict à la 1-D power to structuring, which entails predictability and guarantees normatively desirable collective agency. Van Assche et al. (2014) use the term power of planning to describe this consensual and collective agency, whereby planning aids in ‘the distribution and acceptance of concepts, strategies, forms and materialities’ (p. 1393). Here, actors do not necessarily need to share the outcomes of interactions. Nonetheless, the internalization of structured action entails that however actors want their particular interests to prevail, they enter the participatory space on the understanding that they consent to the structured rules of the game constraining them into defeat or win. It follows that the source of participants’ compliance is not so much external coercion (even though sanctions may be involved), as it is a commitment to the structural rules of the game of democratic participation. And by their very participation, social actors do not only reproduce MSP as a system, including the structures within which it is embedded, but importantly, they are empowered with the dispositional capacity to replay the democratic game across these different structures. Therefore, while actor B may lose episodically in a decision, structural reproduction entails that the episodic loser ‘gains dispositional power from defeat’ to act in the future (Haugaard, 2015, p. 150). In MSP, structural reproduction (through either the cyclical nature of collaborative planning or opportunities for appeals – where applicable) means that the episodic ‘loser’ B is empowered to act in the future and potentially prevail over the episodic ‘winner’ A.

Of course, judging by emerging practices in different MSP contexts, it is clear that the dispositional power to play and replay the democratic game over time may do little to level the playing field for differently-positioned actors. Indeed, most governance regimes provide the condition for normatively reprehensible social relations in which rather than significantly augment actors’ dispositional power to, structural reproduction is systematically disadvantageous to, and creates zero-sum outcomes for, certain actors. In such systems, powerful actors misuse consensual agency and reduce opportunities for concerted action to instrumental strategies.

However, it should be borne in mind that when power relations are so rigid that they are reduced to the question of ‘government’, steering may transform the governed into adversaries (Foucault, 1982). This is because domination is effective only insofar as it is parasitic upon power as freedom (Haugaard, 2012). In other words, domination is not possible without the possibility of recalcitrance, of flight (Foucault, 1982).

The ‘recalcitrance’ of freedom and its implications for practice and marine governability

Foucault (1982) insisted that a key way to grasp the relationality of power is to ‘investigate the forms of resistance and attempts made to dissociate these relations’ (p. 780). Here, power is understood as the mutual interplay between domination and freedom, whereby freedom is not only a condition for the exercise of power but also ‘a starting point for an opposing strategy’ since it ‘undermines and exposes it [power], renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it’ (Foucault, 1990, pp. 100–101). Put differently, when power is exercised, it is done ‘only over free subjects … [i.e.] individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 788).

Conceptualizing freedom in terms of an array of possible actions available to the ‘governed’, paves the way for the analysis of agency, which we conceive as those contingent processes, practices and strategies through which heterogeneous actors seek to problematize and dislocate particular norms, rules and ambitions of planning. As highlighted earlier, in the context of planning in Hiiumaa, Estonia, the experience of MSP as dislocatory propelled residents and municipal actors to legally attack both a proposed wind energy project and the marine plan that legitimized it. Opponents were outraged by perceived project-related environmental injustices, as well as threats to health quality, jobs and place attachments and identities. While many similar oppositional campaigns often dissolve when put to the test of legality, scientificity and time, the steadfastness of opponents in Hiiumaa and their ability to build their opposition on issues recognized across policies and laws had counter-hegemonic effects. That is, opponents challenged the OWE project on the basis of its perceived threat to marine protection and future developments on land, while dismissing the MSP SEA report for being inconclusive – which are issues inscribed in various international policies and conventions (e.g. the EU Natura 2000 policy, the EU MSP Directive and the SEA Protocol of UNECE). Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Estonia drew on these policy instruments to invalidate parts of Estonia’s first MSP in August 2018, particularly sections that designated areas for wind energy development.

A key point needs stressing. In this case, while opposition was vilified by developers and planners alike as a NIMBY phenomenon, the actors concerned did not start off as opponents. Indeed, as argued by Tafon et al. (2019), informal interactions that took place prior to the launch of the MSP process offered conducive conditions for coastal residents and municipal actors to voice their concerns in a dialogical fashion. However, as actual MSP’ing became mired in window-dressing consultations, set alongside rigid applications of legality and programmatic logics, initial agonistic interactions gave way to intractable antagonisms. In other words, therapeutic-style consultations transformed potential allies of planning into what can be called ‘immovable objects of resistance’ (Inch et al. 2018, p. 469).

Two key lessons can be drawn from this case-related discussion, which have implications for both agency and marine governability. The first is that opposition is not necessarily detrimental but has the potential of transforming planning practice in new directions. Indeed, because the Supreme Court of Estonia (as the final juridical authority) invalidated parts of the Hiiumaa MSP on the basis that the SEA report was inconclusive, this ruling is likely to become law and determine how future planning and SEAs are conducted in the country. It follows therefore, that while planning often imagines and creates fantasies in and of the community, the latter too, may provide planning with conceptual innovation on how future planning should look like (Van Assche et al., 2014). In short, while MSP was experienced as exclusionary and dislocatory, it nonetheless provided new possibilities for historic action that paved the way for the revolutionization of a well-established two-dimensional norm around the conduct of SEAs and planning in Estonia.

A second lesson is that by postponing the political and closing down space for the agonistic play of conflict, opportunities for mutual learning and knowledge coproduction (which are key ingredients of a sustainable and effective planning) are automatically foreclosed. What this means is that, the misuse of both consensual agency and the space for concerted action may create distrust of the system and transform potential allies into immovable subjects of resistance, which may in turn adversely affect functionality by increasing transaction costs and reducing efficiency. Perhaps, as a necessary condition for legitimate and efficient planning, planners need to break their ‘silence’ and take an ethical stance vis-à-vis norms and practices (Inch et al., 2017). This proposition begs the question: what does ethical planning entail and to what extent can it transform planning into a less-dominative system for weaker actors and an activity for the sustainable use and protection of marine resources?

Planning as an ethic of care for the self and the other

Struggles against (four-dimensional) subjectivity and submission, according to Foucault, are prevalent and more and more important nowadays – they ‘revolve around the question: Who are we?’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 781). Historically, particularly in ancient Greece, such struggles were carried out by people who occupied positions or played a role in community life. In present societies, these struggles are carried out by likeminded people who continue to assert the right to be different and as such, resist identities, rules and procedures imposed on them in relation to their role in the community. Importantly, these struggles often take the form of ‘a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 781).

The refusal of subjectivity, in our view, is a necessary precondition for MSP as an equitable, accountable and efficient governance regime. To assess this potentiality, we must conceive Foucault’s concept of discipline less as the unreflective obedience to authority and knowledge, and more as the capacity to master oneself: a liberation from one’s own appetites and the establishment of power over oneself, which is inflected with a moral ethos (Foucault, 1991). It is the capacity of the planner and other authority agents as acting subjects, ‘to begin, or resist an idea/fantasy/narrative [and] not to be its means or its subject’ (Gunder, 2003, p. 240). In other words, it is their capacity to look for the ‘immediate’ enemy; to self-reflect; to question their own knowledge and routine action: in short, it is a commitment to parrhesias – the art of speaking truth to power (Foucault, 1983).

Although parrhesias as the liberation of the self was a moral act (as practiced in ancient Greece), it was also inextricably attached to competency and expected of authority. In other words, to not exercise freedom as a parrhesiastes (truth-teller) amounted to social incompetence, in the sense that the authority subject was unfit to participate in public life. Here, the planner’s care for the self should be aimed not so much at her own salvation per se, but at the liberation of others.

The care for the self aims at the good of others … This implies also a relation with others to the extent that care for self renders one competent to occupy a place in the city, in the community or in interindividual relationships … (Foucault, 1991, p. 7).

Taken to the context of MSP, the Foucauldian parrhesias or care for the self may translate as ethico-political planning, which aims at correcting context-specific forms of inequalities that MSP’ing may create or reinforce. Since a major critique leveled at MSP is that power imbalances in the one-dimensional sense may lead to socially regressive and inequitable outcomes (Flannery et al., 2018; Jones et al., 2016; Smith & Jentoft, 2017; Tafon et al., 2019), an ethico-political planning would aim precisely at addressing the issue of elite capture in MSP. In other words, the planner’s practice must be unapologetically informed by ‘an agenda for countervailing power’ (Birnbaum, 2016, p. 319) or ‘an ethical focus to facilitate ongoing agonistic resistance to power and the often pernicious [sic] desire by the dominant minority’ (Gunder, 2003, p. 241). Furthermore, in admitting that her ‘silence’ gives effects to political programs laid down at higher-level governing orders (Inch et al., 2017; Long, 1959) she would also have to be critical of those two-dimensional non-decisions that structure her practice, which entails a high level of self-reflectivity.

Admittedly, in terms of four-dimensional power, the planner – like all subjects – is a product of socialization, so that the inclusions and exclusions that MSP’ing often entails may appear unproblematic to her. Indeed, because dominative practices are reinforced and reproduced through habitus (routinized action), rule-following becomes the planner’s second nature so that any deviation from habitus may entail what Haugaard (2012, p. 43) terms ‘ontological insecurity’ for the rule-following and habituated planner. However, this does not suggest that there is no room for agency. For, as Haugaard notes, social actors learn ‘by rule following, but once they are socially competent, these rules become secondary’ (Haugaard, 2008, p. 192 my emphasis). There is more to it. Foucault theorizes social competence in ways that speak to the possibility of agency for the ethico-political planner and how this may be achieved.

In community life, Foucault notes, parrhesias should be conceived ‘not only as a quality, a virtue, or personal attitude, but as a techne comparable both to the art of medicine and to the art of piloting a boat’ (Foucault, 1983, p. 42 emphasis in original). In both these arts, the parrhesiastes (person practicing parrhesias) would typically combine the necessary theoretical knowledge and practical training in order for his/her work to be useful. But what makes the parrhesiastes socially competent is that in combining both theory and training into practice, she is also able to discern when particular circumstances demand that she acts critically beyond her acquired theoretical knowledge and practical training. That is, the socially competent agent would apply ‘not only the general rules and principles of the art’ but in combination with ‘the particular circumstances, and also what the Greeks called “kairos”, or the critical moment’ (Foucault, 1983, p. 43).

We shall recall the argument made earlier that the source of the planner’s legitimate power over is not her belief in her power as such, but consensual agency or the fact that social actors share a common interpretive horizon, which structure-confirms or validates her authority. Without this validation, the planner’s power over ceases to be legitimate, which, we have argued, may lead to system instability or inefficiency. In both medicine and navigation, Foucault (1983) writes, ‘one person (the pilot or physician) must make decisions, give orders and instructions, exercise power and authority, while the others – the crew, the patient, the staff – must obey if the desired end is to be achieved’ (p. 43). The decisionmaker, Foucault adds, must, in addition to being able to discern the ‘critical moment’ of intervention, also be more competent than the ‘governed’ in order for them to obey.

For in politics the choice of the opportunity, the best moment, is also crucial; and someone is also supposed to be more competent than the others – and therefore has the right to give the orders that the others must obey. In politics, then, there are indispensable techniques which lie at the root of statesmanship considered as the art of governing people (Foucault, 1983, p. 43).

Here, it becomes clear that although the planner is thrown into structures which shape her practice (let us call these her theories and rules), she only becomes ‘socially competent’ when she is able to combine these rules with personal judgement – the skill to discern the particular circumstances and critical moment to act proactively.

Importantly, this kind of liberty is not something that the subject invents. Rather, as highlighted earlier, it is tied to an existing habitus expectation of authority.

If I am now interested … in the way in which the subject constitutes himself in an active fashion, by the practices of the self, these practices are nevertheless not something that the individual invents by himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group (Foucault, 1991, p. 11).

This is precisely the situation referred to earlier in the Estonian MSP legal appeal process, where the Estonian Supreme Court magistrates canceled parts of the Hiiumaa marine plan partly on the basis that the SEA was inconclusive. This is a textbook case of ethico-political decision making. Indeed, although SEAs are by definitional fiat not required to be detailed, the Supreme Court magistrates nonetheless exercised critical judgement and bent theory and rules (i.e. established SEA conventions) – even if this move was mainly occasioned by the fact that opponents were able to streamline their oppositional demands in ways that resonated with the EU Natura 2000 policy. To borrow from Haugaard (2008) and Foucault (1983), the judges in this case undermined their ‘ontological insecurity’ and in combining theory with critical judgment or social competence, they effectively transposed a rule (on how to conduct environmental studies) from a domain of acceptability (i.e. SEA Convention) to a domain where it is not accepted (i.e. Natura 2000) and thereby revealed its arbitrariness.

Possibility of empowerment where the planner’s power ends

We have argued in the previous section that the disciplined subjectivity of the planner is a necessary condition for MSP to be lived as an equitable system. However, the planner’s agency is not a sufficient condition. First, given the preeminence of conservation and blue-growth actors in shaping the direction and strategies of MSP at national and supranational levels, the felicitous (four-dimensional) agency of the planner may do little to correct this two-dimensional bias. Second, planning does not operate in a socio-political or power vacuum but is embedded in and shaped by broader ‘infrastructures of participation’ (Metzger et al., 2017) – history, administrative culture, policy objectives, and political prioritizations (Hassler et al., 2018; Kidd & Shaw, 2014). Third, differentials in the capacities of various stakeholders to pursue and defend their interests procedurally are often more structural than resulting from the inactions of the ‘unethical’ and apolitical planner. In other words, ‘where planning does emerge, it might be without the planners bearing the label ‘planner’’ (Van Assche et al., 2014, p. 2394). For weaker stakeholders such as small-scale fishers, their capacity to influence decisions is often hampered by the unavailability of a variety of social resources at their disposal, including economic resources, education and organizational skills (Tafon, 2019; Jentoft, 2017; Trouillet et al., 2019).

Ultimately, as a sufficient condition for MSP to become a meaningful activity both for planners and the subjects of planning, the state must intervene ‘both as a stakeholder – and in most cases – the ultimate governing authority in MSP’ (Smith & Jentoft, 2017, p. 34). A key way to promote collectivity is by intervening at the very start (i.e. at the two-dimensional level), where the boundaries of MSP are defined, and agendas set.

For instance, to ensure the effective participation of local governments in ways that effectively enhance planning along the land-sea continuum, the state can design policies that make their participation in two-dimensional power workshops a mandatory requirement in lieu of the current dispensation whereby maritime industries, environmental organizations and key government sectors are usually the ones with exclusive access to such strategic meetings. In Sweden, for instance, local governments enjoy a so-called municipal planning monopoly – the right to plan 12 nautical miles from the baseline. Furthermore, on behalf of the state, County Administrative Boards in Sweden are empowered to intervene in their respective regions on issues that affect environmental quality and inter-municipal interests. These constitute examples of pluralism and distributed agency worth adapting to existing socio-political and institutional designs in different planning contexts.

Other political measures to reduce differentials in the capacities of social actors could include the promulgation of legislation or the design of specific policies that are particularly tailored to the needs of the least powerful groups in different domestic contexts. TURF-Reserves, for example, have been advanced as a promising marine governance system that can empower small-scale fishers in MSP (Tafon, 2019). Admittedly, the effective empowerment of weaker stakeholders requires that scholars invest in highlighting power dynamics in different MSP contexts. This could enhance an understanding on who the least favorable stakeholders are, what their context-specific needs are, and ultimately, what empowerment would entail for them.

Conclusion

This paper opened as a critical response to a predominantly conformist and promotional agenda that characterized the early MSP scholarship. In this way, our paper adds to the recent scholarship that seeks pathways through which MSP’ing can be transformed into a more equitable and socially-progressive practice (Flannery et al., 2019; Saunders et al., 2019; Tafon et al., 2019; Trouillet et al., 2019). However, in dissatisfaction with the tendency for some in the critical, second-generation scholarship to conceive power predominantly as restrictive, and for others to focus almost exclusively on the transformative potential of MSP, the paper set out to offer a more balanced reading of MSP through the analysis of the various mechanisms of power at play and an exploration of pathways through which its practice can potentially lead to socially just and equitable outcomes. Our approach was motivated by the fact that we took as a point of departure that a more promising approach to aiding MSP out of its current socially regressive outlook must start by searching and highlight existing forms of power – both restrictive and productive – before seeking ways to minimize dominative-power relations. Therefore, through the lens of a dimensions approach to power and drawing on MSP practice and its literature, we have read MSP through and beyond the claim that it is a constraining arrangement in which there is little room for agency. More directly, by placing particular emphasis on the multi-dimensional and relational character of planning/power, we have offered an understanding of MSP in which the effects of power are as malign and restrictive as they are benign and productive.

As a productive system, we have emphasized that MSP provides various social actors with the dispositional capacity to act in concert and get things done. In simpler terms, without MSP, there would be little talk of collective agency in the marine environment beyond earlier management regimes – which, as it were, have abundantly shown their limits over time. Furthermore, the participation of variously interested actors entails the structural reproduction of MSP and of the structures in which it is embedded. This in itself augments actors’ dispositional capacity for action. Read thus, MSP entails a move from the possibilities of chaos and ‘resource rush’ to social order, which facilitates predictability and guarantees normatively laudable individual and collective agency.

However, the space for concerted action is never immunized from politics, as powerful actors may misuse opportunities for collective agency to pursue individual rather than collective goals. Here, structural biases and particular planning fantasies often conjoin with the ‘silence’ of the rule-following planner to restrict human agency and the performative role of planning. Yet, when planning is experienced as steering, in some cases this may transform potential allies of planning into ‘immovable subjects of resistance’. But while opposition may lead to inefficiency and instability in MSP, it is also desirable in that it has the potential to transform how planning is done in specific settings, particularly, when dissenting voices are successful in framing their demands around issues recognized across policies and laws.

Notwithstanding, we have argued additionally that in order for MSP to be lived as a more accountable and equitable system, the planner must combine theory and training with critical judgment – the latter entailing an ethico-political commitment towards leveling the playing field for weaker actors. Yet, again, because planning is undeniably shaped by broader structures of power and social inequalities, we have put forward that it is onto the state as the ultimate governing authority in MSP that falls the responsibility to minimize differentials in the capacities of various actors to participate in MSP and influence outcomes. Future research can assist national governments in this effort through highlighting who the weakest actors are in different MSP contexts, what their context-specific needs are, and what empowerment will entail for them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ralph Tafon holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences at the School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University, Flemingsberg, Sweden.

Fred Saunders is Associate Professor at the School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University, Flemingsberg, Sweden.

Michael Gilek is Professor at the School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University, Flemingsberg, Sweden.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by BONUS: European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration, and the Swedish Research Council FORMAS [grant number Art 185]; Östersjöstiftelsen [grant number 2186/3.1.1/2014].

Notes

1 By agency we mean individual and collective action. Much collective action in terms of regional cooperation and coordination is taking place transnationally. However, because such efforts are often hampered by variegated national objectives and political prioritizations (Hassler et al., 2018), we limit our consideration of productive agency at the domestic (local and national) level where the realities of MSP’ing are largely felt.