Aligning top-down and bottom-up modes of governance? How EU Fisheries Local Action Groups support small-scale fisheries and coastal community development in Sweden

Small-scale fisheries and coastal communities experienced dramatic downward trends over recent decades impacting rural development on European coastlines. Fisheries governance in the European Union (EU) follows exogenous top-down regulations steering fishing practices through detailed regulations. In contrast, the EU's structural funding system of Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) involves an endogenous approach consisting of more participatory bottom-up processes. This article explores these approaches by investigating the capacity of Swedish FLAGs to support small-scale fisheries and coastal communities. Using document analyses and interviews, we show that, in principle, the FLAG approach has the capacity to support local fisheries developments and to foreground small-scale fisheries interests in combination with community interests. However, the unique Swedish FLAG experience reveals a diminished scope for including small-scale fisheries' and coastal communities' interests on a structural basis. The Swedish FLAG experience, we conclude, mirrors a path-dependent trajectory of marginalisation and disempowerment of local fisheries interests hampering the potential of endogenous development.