Managing Leviathan

Anyone wishing to explore the cutting edge of environmental policy and management will find this book an invaluable tool. - The Honourable David Anderson, Minister of Environment, Government of Canada, 1999-2004

Environmental problems have shocked the twentieth century, shaking the confidence in order and progress that had underpinned the exuberant growth of the industrial and administrative leviathan. Is bureaucracy - the organizational form that helped to create these problems - really suited to solving them?.

"Anyone wishing to explore the cutting edge of environmental policy and management will find this book an invaluable tool." - The Honourable David Anderson, Minister of Environment, Government of Canada, 1999-2004

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, many pointed to failures in management, such as uncontrolled harvesting, as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state-managed and still, two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered and has been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.