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

Introduction 3
aimed to identify causal pathways. 7 Despite many insightful analyses, there
are still important lessons to be learned about the establishment and the
transformation of environmental regimes.
Focusing on the global ocean dumping regime and on the developments
in the control of ocean dumping of low-level radioactive waste (commonly
referred to as radwaste disposal) that have taken place under that regime,
I examine the formation and change of the deep normative structure within
which global ocean dumping policy—particularly with regard to radwaste
disposal—has been embedded. The case of the global ocean dumping
regime and radwaste disposal demonstrates the significance of transnational
coalitions of policy entrepreneurs and public ideas in a powerful way. In
particular, it offers an opportunity to examine more carefully the political
construction of a global environmental problem, the role of persuasion and
communication in an international setting, and the formation of international
public opinion. These themes have not previously been developed
and integrated in regime analysis.
I do not claim in this book that the influence of ideas (or, as some prefer,
the power of ideas) alone can explain regime development. Policy development
should not be reduced to just a question of ideas; it is important to
understand how ideas and interests together influence policy. Scholars who
suggest that ideas have a significant independent impact on policy have not
always been sufficiently careful or precise when specifying under what conditions
ideas are likely to be influential, why one set of ideas had more force
than another in a given situation, and in what way a particular idea made
a difference. To increase our understanding of the policy influence of ideas,
we therefore need to focus more systematically on key issues: What kinds
of ideas matter? In what way do they influence behavior? In what ways and
by whom are influential ideas transmitted? Through careful examination of
these important issues, the ideational approach to political analysis
improves our understanding of policy initiation and policy development at
the national and the international level. The analytical ambition of regime
analysis should be to integrate ideas and interests, rather than to segregate
them. By focusing on the role of ideas, it seems possible to develop auxiliary
hypotheses that could supplement better-established theories about
how power and interests influence regimes.
In this book I hope to show that more attention should be given to how the
interplay of public ideas and policy entrepreneurs influences environmental