Contracts and private law in the emerging ecology of international lawmaking

Global Scripts in Transnational Legal Orders and Governance

“…TLO and recursivity theories do not privilege any particular direction of impetus; they remain agnostic until research reveals which actors are driving the production and adaptation of global scripts in a given issue area and historical moment (Halliday & Shaffer 2015). Scholars employing TLO theory analyze the recursive interaction of public and private entities-nation-states, IGOs, INGOs, global professional service firms, and individuals-across multiple levels of involvement (Block-Lieb & Halliday 2017, Halliday & Shaffer 2015.…”

“…Process matters in TLO theory-not just the processes followed by, within, and among INGOs and NGOs in their construction of global scripts (Halliday et al 2013), but also those followed at national and local sites of implementation and enforcement , Halliday & Shaffer 2015. TLO theory looks beyond top-down influences to consider contestations from the bottom-up , as well as among IOs with overlapping jurisdiction (Block-Lieb & Halliday 2017). "It assesses how the production and implementation of transnational legal norms among international, transnational, and local lawmakers and law practitioners dynamically recursively affect each other" (Halliday & Shaffer 2015, p. 38).…”

“…Form, too, plays an important role in how TLOs emerge and institutionalize. TLO theory promotes a return by sociolegal scholarship to textual analysis of law and lawlike texts, whether hard or soft international law, including explanatory reports and high-level principles (Block-Lieb & Halliday 2017).…”

“…It is, in other words, a concept that refers to texts, statements, and practices; the context in which these are considered; and the consequences of this combination on behaviors. A gathering momentum of interdisciplinary scholarship shows how global scripts emerge and demonstrates that they reflect a politics of lawmaking and anticipate a politics of law implementation (e.g., Block-Lieb & Halliday 2017, Broome & Seabrooke 2021, Gillespie 2012, Halliday et al 2010, Kentikelenis & Seabrooke 2017, Seabrooke & Sending 2020.…”

“…Within a short time, the Financial Stability Board was created to facilitate transnational engagement on this broad range of reform efforts. The board worked together with the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD) and an alphabet soup of transnational networks of regulators, market actors, professional associations, and civil society to produce hundreds of concrete proposals-some policy or position papers; some high-level principles and recommendations; other more lawlike legislative guides, model laws, and guides to enactment (Block-Lieb & Halliday 2017, 2022Halliday & Carruthers 2007;Sheng 2009). While each aspect of regulatory reform holds significance standing alone, viewed as a whole-as a global script centered on reforming the financial architecture-the reforms can be understood and justified as moving toward common, comprehensive, and comprehensible objectives.…”