The long goodbye: science and policy making in the international Whaling Commision

Abstract

This chapter describes the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that serves as a powerful illustration of how expert authority (EA) can become entirely irrelevant as a restraining influence on political interests and imperatives in policy decision-making when levels of uncertainty in expert advice are high and both policy ends and means become the sites of entrenched and ongoing political conflict. It talks about the major debates and policy decisions within the IWC over the last 60 years to illustrate the kinds of institutional challenges the IWC institutional arrangements have struggled to manage and how recognition among IWC member governments of the Scientific Committee's expert authority as the legitimate basis for policy has been restricted to rare junctures in the commission's history where political consensus among members over management priorities and goals occurred. Founded on the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), IWC is both the longest running global wildlife management regime and the first to explicitly acknowledge scientific authority.