| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Maritime piracy is one of the oldest subjects of international law and recently it has reemerged as a serious threat to commerce and security. While states have become more engaged in punishing and preventing piracy, efforts as a whole have been poorly organized, ad hoc, mostly unilateral, slow to develop, and only minimally effective. This is true despite the existence of a regime complex that supposedly promotes effective cooperation on the issue. What explains the insufficient response to this rising economic and security threat? This article argues that the regime complex itself is a major part of the problem. It examines specifically four core elemental regimes that are identifiable by their key texts or organizations: the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, the International Maritime Organization, and the International Maritime Bureau. This analysis adopts a perspective that emphasizes how these different legal and organizational institutions shape actors' understandings of piracy, and thus their interests in it, in conflicting ways. Different elemental regimes push different actors toward different behaviors.
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