Technological Arguing: How Innovation and Business Practices Shape International Environmental Regulation

This paper examines how technological innovation can lead to stringent international environmental regulation. It introduces the explanatory concept of technological arguing to the study of business actors in global environmental politics. The starting point of technological arguing is the observation that the state of innovation is frequently contested. Competing arguments about the technological leeway for regulation are evaluated by decision-makers who primarily strive for consistency. They tend to find those arguments most persuasive that rely on corporate expertise and credible references to existing or emerging business practices. The paper empirically probes the explanatory power of technological arguing against neo-Gramscian and neo-pluralist approaches. It examines the development of new nutrient removal standards for discharges of sewage from passenger ships into the Baltic Sea by the Helsinki Commission and International Maritime Organization. The analysis finds that technological arguing played an important role at every critical moment in the process. Informed references to first-mover business practices were a decisive source of argumentative leverage. Ironically, progressive environmental practices of some cruise companies came to undermine the argumentative power of their own reluctant sectoral interest group. The findings of the paper suggest that technological arguing forms a distinct causal mechanism in regulatory policy-making.