Abstract
This paper explores coordination and cooperation between different levels of governance in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the US National Ocean Policy. Both policies aim at overcoming the previous sectoral organization of the marine policy field by establishing integrated approaches. As in the EU and the US, competencies in marine policies are shared between different levels of governance, the proper implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the National Ocean Policy to large parts depends on the common efforts of all levels involved. In this submission, the co-management approach is used to analyze the coordinative procedures throughout the policy processes in the EU and the US. It derives four criteria for effective shared management from the literature, which are then applied to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the National Ocean Policy. It appears that the EU and the US promote different consensus-oriented procedures: while in the EU, they are mainly part of the decision-making phase, in the US, they are mostly subsequent to the National Ocean Policy's adoption.