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

Explaining Regime Formation 119
motivated to join the group. A different pattern of behavior, however, is
observed in this case: a large group of governments increased the pressure
on individual governments to cooperate in a situation where international
public opinion encouraged collective action. Discussing how voluntary
movements succeed to provide public goods when Olson’s collective action
theory would predict their failure, it has similarly been noted that “sometimes
the mass media help to build up the equivalent of small-group, faceto-face
social pressures” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, p. 116).
In regard to regime formation more broadly, several of Oran Young’s
propositions are confirmed in the case of this regime. First, integrative bargaining
dominated over distributive bargaining. Second, despite objections
by some countries (most prominently Brazil), it seems quite clear that a large
measure of justice was achieved in the end. Third, the approach taken in
the convention was rather straightforward and productive, supporting the
importance of salient solutions. Fourth, the case evidently confirms the
claim that it is necessary that states be guided by concern for joint interests
and common goods.
The case offers less support for the proposition about importance of
shocks or crisis as it is necessary to differentiate between developed countries
(which generally were concerned about the ocean dumping problem)
and developing countries (which generally were much less concerned or
even unconcerned). Somewhat similarly, the first of the two propositions
about policy priority (that high policy priority is necessary for achieving
agreement) is confirmed in the case of developed countries, but the second
proposition (that, conversely, low priority makes it easier to reach agreement)
is supported in the case of the developing countries. The importance
of establishing credible compliance mechanisms is neither confirmed nor
disproved. And, unless interpreted quite broadly, the three probabilistic
propositions hypothesizing that focusing closely on the scientific and technical
basis of the regime facilitates negotiation are not supported in this
case.
As was described in chapter 4, one international conference sponsored by
the U.S. Congress dealt specifically with ocean dumping, and several other
conferences and international meetings brought together foreign decision
makers, prominent environmentalists and ecologists, scientists, officials of
international organizations, and the Stockholm secretariat as part of the
United States’ preparations for the Stockholm conference. This fits well