IWCレジームの変容

活動家型NGOの戦略と規範の受容プロセス

抄録

IWC regime was originally established as an institution to manage whaling in a sustainable manner. However, due to the intensive anti-whaling campaign conducted by activist NGOs such as Greenpeace and the Friends of Earth, a moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted in 1982. Since then, it has changed to be an institution to prohibit whaling for a humanitarian reason, and six whaling countries, fearing of the U. S. sanction, with-drew from commercial whaling tamely. To the contrary, Japan, Norway and Iceland became determined to continue whaling. However, when the moratorium was adopted, they had showed rather passive reaction to the prohibition norm and had not been determined to sustain whaling. Nevertheless, the three countries began to show a strong resentment to the prohibition norm, and went on to sustain whaling firmly.
What caused such a difference in attitude among the whaling countries? The answer exists in the strategies that the activist NGOs adopted. To stop whaling, they took full advantage of physical pressure against the three countries where whaling has either cultural or economic importance without making substantial campaign efforts to persuade their citizens. According to the theory of psychological reactance, pressure as an imposition or proscription of a specific behavior, causes resistance to persuasion, provided the freedom of the behavior is regarded as important to a certain extent. However, pressure does not always cause a reactive response. This depends on the balance between pressure and persuasion. As a persuasive argument has power to effect consent, a psychological backlash will not happen when the power to effect consent exceeds the reactance force. However, the activist NGOs, not having run a campaign zealously in the three countries, consolidated a situation that the latter exceeds the former significantly. The result is a strong backlash by the three whaling countries.
Then, why could the anti-whaling NGOs not conduct an active campaign in the three countries? It was because they were faced with financial constraints. To change the public opinion in the three countries, it seemingly requires more resource investment. Activist NGOs, if failed in costly campaign activity, will suffer from financial problem and may be forced to restructure its business toward downsizing. Therefore they tend to decide their campaign strategies based on the cost-benefit calculation. However, if they concentrate their campaign effort on countries where the issue does not have much importance while depending fully on physical pressure against those that appear to be more resisting to their normative project, activist NGOs are doomed to function as an agent of a global fragmentation of norm and faced with a serious democratic deficit. Thus Activist NGOs are faced with a difficult dilemma whether, in constructing campaign strategies, to choose predominantly easy countries for the sake of sustaining and expanding organization, or to get bravely involved in more resisting countries however risky such a choice is.