LAUSR

Abstract This paper examines the effects of neoliberalization on the opportunities and constraints that fishing cooperatives face in Yucatan, Mexico. Cooperatives have the potential to enhance small-scale fishing livelihoods and participate in sustainable resource governance. However, promoting cooperatives’ success entails developing a realistic understanding of the political and economic contexts in which they operate. Drawing on interview and census data, the analysis employs the theory of club goods to examine how the neoliberalization of Mexican fisheries policies in the 1980s and 1990s has affected cooperatives’ ability to provide members with collective benefits, and thus the success and failure of fishing cooperatives in the region. In general, neoliberalization has reduced support to fishing cooperatives and generated greater challenges for their success in Yucatan. The results of this study are likely relevant to many other small-scale fisheries in the South that have undergone similar processes of neoliberalization.