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Whalers, cetologists, environmentalists, and the international management of whaling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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Postwar management of whaling was marked by two major policy changes: the 1974 adoption of a more restrictive set of management procedures and the 1982 adoption of a moratorium on commercial whaling. In both cases, U.S. government efforts to ensure compliance with the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decisions were central to the outcome. Yet no government's choices can be understood without examining how decision makers were influenced by three nongovernmental groups—an economic interest group of whaling industry managers, an expert epistemic community of cetologists, and an issue-oriented lobbying coalition of environmentalists—which vied for influence nationally and transnationally. The epistemic community of cetologists shaped particular policy choices only in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Earlier, it was eclipsed by the industry managers and, later, by the environmentalists. However, it had sufficient continuing influence to limit the range of policy options and thereby prevent the adoption of the most consumptionist alternatives in the 1940s and 1950s and of the most preservationist ones in recent years.

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Research Article
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1992

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References

This article has benefited from the comments of other contributors to this issue of IO particularly Peter Haas and Raymond F. Hopkins, and from the suggestions of Steinar Andresen, Peter Cowhey, Peter J. Katzenstein, Stephen D. Krasner, Ronald Lipschutz, Craig Murphy, John S. Odell, and Oran Young.

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57. See M'Gonigle, “The ‘Economizing’ of Ecology”; and Scott, Peter, “The End of Whaling,” The Siren, no. 26, 12 1984, pp. 24.Google Scholar

58. Compare, for example, the remarks of Craig Van Note and those of Kelley, J. B., in U.S. Congress, House Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. Whaling Policies/ International Whaling Commission: Hearings Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 97th Congress, 1st sess., 1981, pp. 1923 and 34–35.Google Scholar

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101. The Supreme Court overturned earlier district and appellate court decisions requiring application of the Packwood-Magnuson provision to Japan in July 1986 in American Cetacean Society v. Baldridge. However, the threat of another suit, Greenpeace USA et al. v. Robert Mosbacher et al., probably had some influence on the decision to apply the Packwood-Magnuson provision to Japan in 1988 after the Japanese ignored Scientific Committee criticism and issued scientific permits for whaling. The threat of the suit also helped keep alive the issue of trade sanctions against Norway and Iceland for similar, though less extensive, activity.

102. Holt, Sidney, letter to the editor, The Pilot (UNEP-IUCN newsletter for the Marine Mammal Action Plan), no. 3, 04 1989, p. 13.Google Scholar

103. Before 1977, the Scientific Committee lacked even the right to comment on whether permits should be issued; that right was secured as a compromise between whaler preferences and the U.S. proposal that the Scientific Committee be required to approve all permits. See Scarff, , “The International Management of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises,” p. 634.Google Scholar

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105. See Donovan, , “Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission,” pp. 5354Google Scholar. Regarding the Icelandic reaction, see Whaling Could Resume Next Year,” News from Iceland, 08 1990, p. 1.Google Scholar

106. See Klinowska, Margaret, “How Brainy Are Cetaceans?Oceanus 32 (Spring 1989), pp. 1920.Google Scholar

107. Haas and Ikenberry suggest that capturing the preponderant power is particularly important when intergovernmental organizations are weak or nonexistent. See the following articles in this issue of IO: Peter M. Haas, “Banning Chlorofluorocarbons: Epistemic Community Efforts to Protect Stratospheric Ozone”; and G. John Ikenberry, “A World Economy Restored: Expert Consensus and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement.”

108. Other epistemic communities, such as those described by Hopkins and Haas, have suffered from internal disagreements but maintained their influence because they were less sharply challenged by other groups. See the following articles in this issue of IO: Raymond F. Hopkins, “Reform in the International Food Aid Regime: The Role of Consensual Knowledge”; and Haas, “Banning Chlorofluorocarbons.”