ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 has provided the outlines of a conceptual framework with which to analyse the governance of (European) fisheries (for a more detailed presentation, see Kooiman et al., 1997). The present Chapter will take up this framework in more detail, to show what it takes to create a ‘social-political opportunity’. To create an opportunity is to carefully convene actors with a diversity of ideas and interests. They are part of complex constellations of relations and they function within situations with manifold tensions and conflicts. Bringing such actors together calls for forms of interactions in which aspects such as diversity, dynamics and complexity are represented.
