Maritime Policy and Globalisation

This chapter examines a number of characteristics of the maritime industry which make it unlike any other. It is inherently mobile – both physically in that ships can be moved with relative ease to a very large number of world locations; and in terms of capital, which involves no physical movement of assets but a transfer of ownership, registration or other features to wherever makes most financial sense. These are intrinsically linked in that the capital mobility of shipping is enhanced by the physical mobility of the assets which subsequently makes any sort of compulsory national or state association very difficult. These two features of mobility are also fundamentally important when it comes to the issue of governance, and this chapter examines the derivation of maritime policy and in particular the relationship between maritime policies at different levels of jurisdiction of origin and imposition – international, supra-national, national, regional and local. The issues of mobility outlined here are the major features of the industry which drives policy at all levels, although not to the exclusion of a large range of other factors which need to be assessed.