New Zealand Fisheries Management: a Study in Bureaucratisation

Abstract

This thesis examines the process of bureaucratisation by which social activities become subject to bureaucratically constructed, calculable rules and technical knowledge. The process is viewed in relation to the New Zealand commercial fishing industry, and in particular to the quota management system implemented on 1 October 1986. The examination of this process takes place against the background of a review of the history of government fisheries administration in New Zealand. This review, covering the period 1866 to 1990, is organised in three parts covering the initial regulation of the commercial industry, government encouragement and development, and finally retrenchment and quotas. Two theoretical frameworks are proposed within which the process may be analysed. The first is a traditional, Weberian approach. which focuses on the formal, rational nature of bureaucratic action. The second presents a subjective theoretical framework which focuses on the nature of social reality and the creative role played by language in constructing and maintaining that reality. A fundamental tension is identified between bureaucratic and social actions. The above two theoretical frameworks are drawn upon to explain how social action becomes subject to bureaucracy's calculable rules and technical knowledge. It is proposed that whereas the traditional, Weberian view of bureaucracy has considerable explanatory value in understanding the process of bureaucratisation, valuable insights denied to this approach are possible through the alternative, subjective formulation. The thesis concludes with a prescriptive statement on the nature of bureaucratic action and its relation to organizational theory.