The Paradox of Legal Unification

Abstract

Countries often choose collective approaches resulting in the unification of the legal rules of individual countries. However, in simple standard games of legal harmonization, standard cooperative approaches of analysis are unable to reproduce any collective choice leading to legal unification. We call this dissonance the paradox of unification. We study if some modifications in assumptions about preferences or cooperative solution concepts can solve this paradox. While the introduction of social preferences or of a Kantian concept of equilibrium doesn’t resolve the paradox, legal unification can be a Berge equilibrium of this legal standardization game. JEL Classification: C71, K40, N40.