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

86 Chapter 5
to effectively set new norms for ocean protection. To attract public and political
attention to the need for regulation, this transnational coalition of policy
entrepreneurs spread the simplistic, powerful idea that the oceans were
“dying.”
Contradicting the claim made by realists, the hegemon perceived ocean
dumping as a global environmental problem involving all states. Protection
of the national and collective interest required that all states work together
in controlling ocean dumping. But an international policy would be realized
only if states could agree on a definition of the problem that needed to be
solved. This could not be achieved by coercion, co-optation, and the manipulation
of incentives; it called for international persuasion and education.
Though chapter 6 will focus on those aspects and stages that the interestbased
regime approach addresses in most detail, it will also demonstrate
that realist propositions do not explain the establishment of the global
ocean dumping regime satisfactorily.