The roles of activist NGOs in the development and transformation of IWC regime: the interaction of norms and power

Abstract

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was originally established as a regime to manage whaling under the norm of conservation for use. However, over time it was transformed into a regime to prohibit whaling, largely due to the anti-whaling campaigns that were mounted by activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that favored a norm of pure preservation. This resulted in an IWC decision to place a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. In response to this decision, six whaling countries abandoned whaling under threat of US sanctions. In contrast, three countries, Japan, Norway, and Iceland, decided to continue whaling while their attitudes concerning the moratorium decision were rather passive or moderate when it was first introduced. Later, they became highly determined to continue whaling. In fact, they lead an upsurge in pro-whaling participants at the IWC, which is currently deadlocked between pro- and anti-whaling forces. This paper uses the concept of psychological reactance to better understand the behavior of pro-whaling countries in the face of considerable pressures from anti-whaling elements. We argue that the strong resistance of Japan, Norway, and Iceland to the whaling ban can be explained by the social and economic importance of whaling in each country combined with the different strategies adopted by the NGOs. Our results suggest that NGOs’ strategies vis-a-vis these countries were counterproductive and that persuasion, while more time-consuming and expensive, would have been more effective than pressure in the long run.