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The leading role taken on by Portugal since the middle of the 1980’s in the debate surrounding the creation of an international regime for the ocean is quite remarkable. Portugal’s tradition of largely passive foreign policy, marked chiefly by prudence and by a close alignment with the policies agreed to by the member states of the EU was broken in 1995 by an important set of initiatives in the area of oceanic diplomacy. The focus of these was the Independent World Commissionfor Oceans (IWCO). This article analyzes the role of IWCO as a new institutional model, one that marks a tradition between the traditional and the "post-Westphalian" worlds, and examines the role played by Portugal in the work of this commission. In this context, it analyzes the concept of the new internationalism through which states work with actors such as NGO’s and social movements in order to encourage structural change in the international agenda.