Transformations  in
Business & Economics

INSTITUTIONAL IMBALANCE OF INTERESTS IN MARITIME TRANSPORT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Milica Delibasic

ABSTRACT. The subject of the paper is a critique of ineffective institutions in the field of maritime transport. The aim of the paper is to explain the basic reasons for the existence of an institutional imbalance between the interests of maritime transport and sustainable development, i.e. continuous institutional erosion in this sector at the global level, which leads to its impasse and jeopardizing sustainability. It starts with one basic and two auxiliary hypotheses. A basic hypothesis is that the maritime industry sustainability implies a balance between conflicting interests: social legitimacy (including ecology - Glonti et al., 2020) and economic efficiency. Auxiliary hypotheses are a) in the near future, the institutional logic of sustainability must dominate in relation to business-as-usual, and b) the existence of two competing institutional logics in maritime transport causes its reduced efficiency, i.e. long-term crisis operations. The paper uses the basic methods of economics: generalisation, abstraction, description, analysis, synthesis, and graphical modelling. The conclusion states the verification of all hypotheses, as well as the fact that in the field of maritime transport there is a long-term institutional stagnation, which inevitably leads to loss of confidence in the system, various stagnant processes and institutional fiasco in regulating GHG emissions.

KEYWORDS:  institutions, maritime transport, sustainable development, conflicting interests, institutional logic of sustainability.

JEL classification:  D02, O17, P37, P48, L92, Q01, Q56.