Adventures in cross-disciplinary studies: Grand strategy and fisheries management

This article explores whether the “Grand Strategy” (GS) approach is useful in the field of fisheries management. GS is derived from the study of warfare and its advocates argue that its lessons can be applied to a wide variety of fields and institutions. This article presents and evaluates the usefulness to fisheries management of five principles recommended by the Yale Grand Strategy program for application in the field of Global Health: (1) start with the ends in mind; (2) take an ecological approach; (3) recognize that tactics matter; (4) use positive deviance to characterize practical solutions and foster scale-up and (5) understand the importance of integrating timely intelligence. It adds a sixth principle, suggested by the literature that prompted the GS approach: always anticipate friction. It argues that while many of the principles offered by the GS approach have long been recognized in fisheries management and closely related fields, GS offers support for these and some new insights. Central among these is the importance of clear policy goals and the lack of natural harmony at various levels of action. The weakness of the GS approach is a lack of recognition of the political difficulties involved in adopting a Grand Strategy.