International Law and the Turn to Political Economy

Abstract

An increasing number of international law scholars over the last few years have started to turn their attention to the study of political economy. To what extent can this trend be considered an indication of an underlying ‘disciplinary turn’? How should one understand the phenomenon of disciplinary turns? The answer we propose to this question in this article proceeds from the assumption that not all disciplinary shifts follow the same logic. Unlike the linguistic or the historical turn, the turn to political economy in contemporary international law does not represent an exercise in inter-disciplinary exploration. The concept of political economy used in international law has very little to do with the actual discipline of political economy. It is much more diffuse and unfocused in theoretical terms. What gives it its essential sense of identity is not any form of distinct methodological orientation, but rather its basic usefulness as a potential marker of critical self-distancing vis-à-vis the mainstream international law tradition and its ideological function as a mediating device for the expression of a deep-seated concern about the structural injustices of modern capitalism.

New Voices and New Perspectives in International Economic Law

“…84 See Sinclair (2018), p. 841 (868). 85 See for further discussion, Haskell and Rasulov (2018), p. 243. See also the various contributions in Mattei and Haskell (2015) and Brabazon (2017).…”

“…22 For further background, seeRasulov (2012), p. 151. 23 For further discussion, seeHaskell and Rasulov (2018), p. 243. An important element of this process of theoretical opening is reflected in the fact that a growing body of scholarship about IEL is now produced by nonlawyers and scholars whose primary disciplinary training is in another field.See, e.g., Slobodian (2018);Moudud (2018), p. 289.24 SeeHobsbawm (1997), p. 354.…”

Bound by the Economic Constitution: Notes for “Law and Political Economy” in Europe

“…In this article, I aspire to start a conversation about the role and possible contribution of an LPE research agenda in Europe (Kjaer 2020a;Haskell and Rasulov 2018). With that goal in mind, I attempt to map the critical approaches that challenge the role of the law in the prioritization of liberal economic commitments-including market freedoms, undistorted competition, and monetary stability-at the expense of democratic participation and social welfare considerations, in the context of the EU.…”