Arguing over technology: the coproduction of business practices and international maritime environmental regulation

Abstract

This dissertation explores the puzzle that international environmental regulations seem to develop dynamically despite the close involvement of business actors in their making. First, the dissertation asks to what extent international regulations are designed to really exert control over corporate environmental conduct. I conceptualize the notion of regulatory stringency, develop a novel stringency index, and use it to gather data on the regulation of environmental impacts of maritime shipping and offshore oil and gas production. The descriptive statistical data analysis finds that numerous regulations go beyond window-dressing as they require improvements in environmental performance and aim at eliciting compliance with these requirements. Among several patterns of regulatory variance, the analysis shows that international organizations with strong business participation produce relatively high shares of stringent regulation. Second, the dissertation asks how and to what extent business and its environmental practices can influence or shape contentious decisions in international regulatory design. I develop the theory of argumentative coproduction which posits that corporate environmental practices can tip the scales when regulators argue over technology. Building on psychological assumptions about consistency-seeking decision-makers, I argue that progressive environmental practices of first-mover companies provide powerful evidence for the feasibility of more stringent regulation. My theory differs from models which highlight ideas of activists and scientists or interests and power resources of materially dominant corporations and states as drivers of regulation. The explanatory power of the different models is probed in two qualitative case studies of shipping regulation by the International Maritime Organization. The case studies find that the empirical observations are most congruent with argumentative coproduction. In the regulation of nutrient inputs from passenger ships in the Baltic Sea, arguments for demanding standards prevailed thanks to the development and uptake of new sewage treatment technology by a few first-mover firms. In the regulation of fuel use in Arctic shipping, the voluntary transition to cleaner fuels by ever more companies facilitated the development of a ban of heavy fuel oil. The findings suggest that international environmental regulations develop dynamically not despite but because of business involvement in negotiations. The dissertation concludes that green first-mover businesses are constructive partners in international environmental politics and should therefore be involved more systematically into regulatory processes.