Rasulov: The Discipline of International Economic Law at a Crossroads

Akbar Rasulov (Univ. of Glasgow - Law) has posted The Discipline of International Economic Law at a Crossroads (in New Voices and New Perspectives in International Economic Law, J. Haskell & A. Rasulov eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Old certainties are melting away. An era has drawn to a close. The foundations of the global economic system are rapidly changing. The opening of intellectual horizons that has come in the wake of these epochal shifts calls for a fundamental rethinking of the main functions and tasks of international economic law (IEL) as a disciplinary project. It also calls for a new explanation of international law’s systemic potential, power, and effectivity in the context of contemporary global governance. How does international law influence the workings of international economic governance? What are the main ways in which it can impact on the course of global economic affairs? Drawing on the traditions of legal realism, Marxism, and classical law-and-economics, this essay outlines a four-fold theory of IEL’s regulatory effectivity: IEL as a price-setting mechanism, IEL as a mechanism for the structuring of opportunities, IEL as a mechanism of ideological legitimation, and IEL as a mechanism of disciplining and interpellation. The goal of this theoretical project is to promote an intellectual recalibration of IEL’s disciplinary ambit along fundamentally functionalist lines: the discipline of IEL should study everything that pertains to how the effective legal realities of global economic governance are set up, how they operate, and how they are produced.