TY - JOUR
T1 - The case against international cooperation
AU - Hurd, Ian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The idea that international law and institutions represent cooperative means for resolving inter-state disputes is so common as to be almost taken for granted in International Relations scholarship. Global-governance scholars often use the terms international law and cooperation interchangeably and treat legalization as a subset of the broader category of inter-governmental cooperation. This paper highlights the methodological and substantive problems that follow from equating 'global governance' with 'international cooperation' and suggests an alternative. The traditional model applies liberal political theory to the study of international institutions and interprets global governance as the realization of shared interests. It deflects research away from questions about trade-offs and winners or losers. In place of cooperation theory, I outline an overtly political methodology that assumes that governance-global or otherwise-necessarily favors some interests over others. In scholarship, the difference is evident in research methods, normative interpretation, and policy recommendations, as research is reoriented toward understanding how international institutions redistribute inequalities of wealth and power.
AB - The idea that international law and institutions represent cooperative means for resolving inter-state disputes is so common as to be almost taken for granted in International Relations scholarship. Global-governance scholars often use the terms international law and cooperation interchangeably and treat legalization as a subset of the broader category of inter-governmental cooperation. This paper highlights the methodological and substantive problems that follow from equating 'global governance' with 'international cooperation' and suggests an alternative. The traditional model applies liberal political theory to the study of international institutions and interprets global governance as the realization of shared interests. It deflects research away from questions about trade-offs and winners or losers. In place of cooperation theory, I outline an overtly political methodology that assumes that governance-global or otherwise-necessarily favors some interests over others. In scholarship, the difference is evident in research methods, normative interpretation, and policy recommendations, as research is reoriented toward understanding how international institutions redistribute inequalities of wealth and power.
KW - international cooperation
KW - international institutions
KW - international theory
KW - liberal world order
KW - liberalism
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U2 - 10.1017/S1752971920000470
DO - 10.1017/S1752971920000470
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85092033207
JO - International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law and Philosophy
JF - International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law and Philosophy
SN - 1752-9719
ER -