Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

7
Explaining Regime Formation
Building a global environmental regime is a complex and dynamic process.
Power, interests, and knowledge might all influence how, why, and under
what conditions regimes are built. One combination of power, interests,
and knowledge might explain the development of one type of regime
dynamics; a different combination might explain the development of a different
type of regime dynamics. The three prominent approaches to regime
analysis that I presented in chapter 3 analyze regime formation through different
conceptual lenses and disagree as to which aspects, steps, and stages
are most important.
In this chapter I discuss and compare to what extent the empirical findings
presented in chapters 4–6 confirm the hypotheses of power-based,
interest-based, and knowledge-based theories as well as those of the
approach concerned with transnational coalitions of policy entrepreneurs.
In chapter 4 I examined the stages of regime formation that epistemiccommunity
theorists address in most detail. In chapters 5 and 6 I examined
the stages that the power-based and interest-based approaches
address in most detail. Although I examined different aspects of and different
stages in the construction of the global ocean dumping regime in
chapters 4–6, and drew some conclusions about the explanatory power of
each theoretical approach, in this chapter I systematically compare the
four approaches in light of all the empirical findings. This allows me to
avoid theoretical straw men and to empirically assess and compare competing
hypotheses about regime formation. I conclude in this chapter that
a transnational entrepreneur coalition was essential in the construction
of the global ocean dumping regime. Only to a small degree did the
process of regime establishment unfold according to the propositions of
prominent regime theories.