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

Transnational Coalitions 39
and solutions as well as mobilize political and public support behind their
initiative.
Individuals in transnational entrepreneur coalitions share an interest in
promoting international policy projects reflecting their common beliefs and
values. Transnational coalitions of policy entrepreneurs are best able to
influence international policy and regimes in situations where their policy
projects are compatible with powerful global public ideas and address perceived
important international problems. Within particular cognitive and
institutional structures, the influence of entrepreneur coalitions and the
power of the ideas they push are mutually constitutive and reinforcing.
These coalitions persuade countries that by creating common policies and
regimes they protect both their national and their collective interests.
In the environmental field, these coalitions encompass policy entrepreneurs
in government, national administrations, international organizations,
environmentalists, scientists, and ecologists, who together seek to translate
their shared beliefs and values into international environmental policy. Such
loosely organized transnational coalitions of like-minded policy entrepreneurs
held together by their shared values and common policy project might
be conceived of as de facto natural coalitions. 13 Under certain conditions,
their ideas and solutions become institutionalized in the form of regimes;
unlike epistemic communities, however, they do not necessarily wield
bureaucratic power. Their members may be found both inside and outside
government, and therefore it is sometimes difficult to distinguish accurately
between government and civil society. Hence, a major strength of transnational
entrepreneur coalitions is their ability to transcend boundaries separating
governmental structure and society and boundaries separating
domestic and international arenas. They can therefore often supply policy
entrepreneurship in both arenas of the two-level games through which
regimes are built and changed. 14
To solve targeted environmental problems, transnational entrepreneur
coalitions strategically frame international environmental problems and
deliberately construct norms and institutions defining what constitutes
socially acceptable and legitimate behavior. They exert a strong influence
on problem definition and agenda formation in the early stages of regime
establishment. Interests in protecting the environment are often broad and
diffuse, and the need for environmental protection is seldom obvious.
Environmental problems do not simply “exist”; they are politically