The task of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (1967–82) was to create a new ocean regime. Participants negotiated every major issue of ocean use: jurisdiction in the coastal and contiguous zones, the territorial sea, and the new two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ); transit and overflight through straits and archipelagos; fisheries management in the EEZs and high seas; ocean environmental obligations; the right to conduct ocean science; and the management of deep seabed mineral exploitation. Negotiating the treaty required more than fifteen years and the consent of more than one hundred and fifty nations. The resulting treaty, composed of three hundred and twenty articles plus seven major annexes, represents the final product of the largest, longest, and most complex formal negotiation in modern times.
Negotiating the New Ocean Regime analyzes both the substance of the problems at hand—what should be done about the oceans—and the process of bargaining and negotiating. With law and history as a background, Robert Friedheim uses regime theory and resource economics to analyze ocean problems and bargaining/cooperation theory of negotiation. To evaluate the treaty through the eyes of the stakeholders, the author employs a multi-attribute utility model. Finally, he assesses the bargaining system—parlimentary diplomacy with consensus as the decisive rule—for its usefulness, limitations, and applicability to other current global problems.
Robert L. Friedheim is director of the school of international relations at the University of Southern California where he teaches courses on international negotiation, ocean policy, international environmental problems, and science, technology, and international politics. He is author or editor of Japan and the New Ocean Regime, Making Ocean Policy, Managing Ocean Resources, The Navy and the Common Sea, and The Seattle General Strike. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
"A very impressive study that I have no doubt will become one of the major works on the Law of the Sea negotiations. It reports the results of a substantial empirical research effort of the type that is becoming quite rare in international research."—Marvin S. Soroos, author of The Endangered Atmosphere: Preserving a Global Commons
"Combines a sophisticated knowledge of ocean law, bargaining theory, negotiation processes and quantitative analysis that is done in a theoretically sound and scientifically calculated manner.... What makes this study especially useful is that it examines the process of negotiation and conciliation, not merely supplies an assessment of the results of that process."—Christopher D. Joyner, author of Governing the Frozen Commons