Globalisation and de-regulation in the maritime industry

The development of the Flags of Convenience (FOC) system has had serious repercussions for labour as shipowners, in search of cheaper crews, have recruited ‘crews of convenience’ from developing nations. This paper examines the record of FOCs to analyse the effects of globalisation upon the working lives of seafarers. The method used will be to compare the regimes of FOCs, and this will be done by the analysis of a flag state conformance index (FLASCI) created by the authors, which utilises a large number of measures of a stateʹs capacity to maintain and enforce a regulatory regime for the vessels flying its flag.