SCIENCE, POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN - THE CASE OF THE NORTHEAST ATLANTIC LAND-BASED POLLUTION REGIME

At the 1993 joint meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions for the pr evention of marine pollution in the North-East Atlantic, a reorganizat ion of the Commission's scientific and technical advisory groups was d ecided upon. Addressing the background for this reorganization and the general functioning of the PARCON scientific-political complex so far , this article concludes that the PARCON organizational approach, with a strong national/administrative flavour in the scientific/technical work, has seemingly functioned quite well so far. But the closer coope ration with the more 'independent' ICES signalled in the reorganizatio n may also be interpreted as an awareness of the fundamental legitimac y problems related to such an 'administrative' science-politics model.