The Importance of Interplay Between Leadership and Social Capital in Shaping Outcomes of Rights-Based Fisheries Governance

Findings show that social capital may not be a useful predictor of success, while the presence of engaged leadership and agreement among members around sanctions appears more closely linked to performance across all social and ecological outcome variables. A key finding is that the use of social capital as a broad term encompassing multiple pro-social variables may not be a fruitful way forward for improving our understanding of the determinants of success in resource management. Instead results indicate that leadership interacts with specific aspects of what is generally referred to as social capital to affect outcomes. To allow theoretical refinement and hypotheses testing regarding determinants of governance outcomes we suggest the social processes measured under the broad umbrella of social capital should be kept separate.