Intentional Oil Pollution: Changing Preferences, Capacities and Institutional Characteristics

Abstract

"The almost forty year history of international regulation of intentional oil pollution is the history of the shift from a lead activist nation (the U.K.) with a mildly-strong commitment to environmental protection, medium-strong power (by itself) to influence other actors, and little empirical knowledge of the relative adequacy of various regime alternatives to a new lead activist nation (the U.S.) with radically stronger preferences for environmental protection, dramatically stronger power resources available for influencing others, and more than a decade and a half of experience with one set of (failed) policies. The latter nation wanted and was able to create a much stronger institution, which, while having no more specific rules, had significantly wider scope and significantly stronger decision-making rules and greater rights and duties available to those committed to change rather than the status quo."