Marine spatial planning as a tool for regional ocean governance?: An analysis of the New England ocean planning network

Marine spatial planning (MSP) requires extensive integration and collaboration between and among government agencies and non-governmental individuals and organizations. Such collaboration has also been identified as critical to the broader goal of achieving regional ocean governance. Social network analysis (SNA) is a suite of methods for systematically analyzing relations between individuals and organizations and provides insight into the extent and nature of collaboration and into governance networks more broadly. A SNA was conducted of the governance network shaping a regional MSP initiative in the New England region of the U.S. from 2012 to 2014, focusing in particular on a subset of key collaborators comprising the core of this network. The SNA was designed to investigate whether this network demonstrates the level of inter-organizational collaboration and integration that MSP scholars assert is needed to meaningfully improve regional ocean governance. Results suggest that the broader New England regional ocean planning network is large, decentralized, and of low density, thus well-suited to solving complex boundary-spanning problems like the management of ocean space. The core collaboration network is similarly diverse; well-connected and influential members of the core collaboration network include representatives of intergovernmental regional ocean partnerships, state government affiliates, and, to a lesser extent, federal government affiliates. Influential members also include key representatives of non-governmental organizations and universities. Conversely, local government affiliates are absent from the network, and ocean users and industry representatives are also absent from the core collaboration network but are included in the broader network and involved in the MSP process through targeted outreach efforts. These results indicate that both horizontal and vertical collaboration are being facilitated through the core collaboration network, though collaboration could be improved through greater participation by local government, users, and industry. This study illustrates how MSP, applied regionally, may help facilitate collaboration, thereby helping to advance a regional ocean governance approach, but that further research is needed to compare this case to others and to observe how this network sustains over time.