Pub Date : 2021-05-20eCollection Date: 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1926141
Dorothea Endres
This article looks at the human side of protecting foreign investment in the sense that it zooms onto the role stereotypes play in the development of the relation between human rights and investment law. I demonstrate that international human rights law not only protects from discrimination based on stereotypes but also creates and reiterates stereotypes. These stereotypes may entrench differences between communities but also bear potential for new convergences. I argue that we need to focus on the humans producing the transnational legal discourse and the process of normalisation of those humans in order to destabilise stereotypes that hinder possible convergences of human rights and investment community. In short, this paper explores in what way international law's stereotypes encourage convergence or divergence in transnational legal discourse on the intersection between human rights and investment law.
{"title":"The human side of protecting foreign investment.","authors":"Dorothea Endres","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1926141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1926141","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article looks at the human side of protecting foreign investment in the sense that it zooms onto the role stereotypes play in the development of the relation between human rights and investment law. I demonstrate that international human rights law not only protects from discrimination based on stereotypes but also creates and reiterates stereotypes. These stereotypes may entrench differences between communities but also bear potential for new convergences. I argue that we need to focus on the humans producing the transnational legal discourse and the process of normalisation of those humans in order to destabilise stereotypes that hinder possible convergences of human rights and investment community. In short, this paper explores in what way international law's stereotypes encourage convergence or divergence in transnational legal discourse on the intersection between human rights and investment law.</p>","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 2","pages":"249-268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20414005.2021.1926141","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39904940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1969628
Michael Elliot
ABSTRACT The problem of transnational corporate responsibility as it relates to human rights has been conceptualised as arising from a ‘governance gap’ (or gaps). Such a framing focuses attention on efforts to bridge that gap, including through expansion of private regulation, typically identified with the work of transnational law. This paper problematises that framing. It argues first, that the notion of ‘gaps’ in law (or governance more broadly) is inapt and second, that their invocation facilitates responses conducive to, rather than constraining of, transnational corporate power and authority. The argument is developed through analysis of decisions issued in the 1950s concerning oil concessions in Middle Eastern states that were formative of a postwar order enabling such power. The problem of (transnational) corporate human rights violations and impunity as it concerns law, the paper concludes, is better understood as arising not from any gap in law’s rule, but from how law rules.
{"title":"Problematising the ‘governance gap’: corporations, human rights, and the emergence of transnational law","authors":"Michael Elliot","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1969628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1969628","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The problem of transnational corporate responsibility as it relates to human rights has been conceptualised as arising from a ‘governance gap’ (or gaps). Such a framing focuses attention on efforts to bridge that gap, including through expansion of private regulation, typically identified with the work of transnational law. This paper problematises that framing. It argues first, that the notion of ‘gaps’ in law (or governance more broadly) is inapt and second, that their invocation facilitates responses conducive to, rather than constraining of, transnational corporate power and authority. The argument is developed through analysis of decisions issued in the 1950s concerning oil concessions in Middle Eastern states that were formative of a postwar order enabling such power. The problem of (transnational) corporate human rights violations and impunity as it concerns law, the paper concludes, is better understood as arising not from any gap in law’s rule, but from how law rules.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"196 - 212"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59994615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1977019
Sarah Jakob
ABSTRACT The Social Credit System (SCS) is on the verge of becoming a new regulatory reality. The CCP is changing its governance tools by combining social management and big data. This article provides an overview on the possible impact of the SCS on corporations (CSCS) and analyses its potential extraterritorial effects. The role of transnational law (TL) as a political project is discussed and TL is thus a subject of this paper. Yet, concepts of TL are also used methodologically, as an analytical framework, to make subtle extraterritorial effect and potential legal change visible. The paper places the CSCS in the centre of the analysis and considers technological development, a changing geopolitical landscape, economic interdependence and the behaviour of individuals. The CSCS is an emerging example of the strategic and flexible norm diffusion of powerful states—which underlines the importance of TL as a problem orientated and border-transcending analytical framework.
{"title":"The corporate social credit system in China and its transnational impact","authors":"Sarah Jakob","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1977019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1977019","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Social Credit System (SCS) is on the verge of becoming a new regulatory reality. The CCP is changing its governance tools by combining social management and big data. This article provides an overview on the possible impact of the SCS on corporations (CSCS) and analyses its potential extraterritorial effects. The role of transnational law (TL) as a political project is discussed and TL is thus a subject of this paper. Yet, concepts of TL are also used methodologically, as an analytical framework, to make subtle extraterritorial effect and potential legal change visible. The paper places the CSCS in the centre of the analysis and considers technological development, a changing geopolitical landscape, economic interdependence and the behaviour of individuals. The CSCS is an emerging example of the strategic and flexible norm diffusion of powerful states—which underlines the importance of TL as a problem orientated and border-transcending analytical framework.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"294 - 314"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46776845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1978203
Ioannis Kampourakis
ABSTRACT This article traces a transition in the aspirations of social justice on global scale. The ‘welfare world’ vision of global justice, as it was captured most prominently by the proposals for a New International Economic Order in the mid-1970s, is contrasted with the contemporary ambitions of ‘supply chain ethics’, which seek to infuse transnational corporations with social responsibilities. These visions differ drastically in their ambitions, their epistemologies, and the role they reserve for the state but share a structural outlook on issues of social justice. Following the theme of the Special Issue, the shortcomings and the potential of the current supply chain ethics agenda in addressing the ‘human problems’ associated with corporate irresponsibility are reviewed. The paper suggests that mediating between structure and agency in a way that recontextualises the democratic principle is necessary to challenge power asymmetries in global regimes of production.
{"title":"From global justice to supply chain ethics","authors":"Ioannis Kampourakis","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1978203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1978203","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article traces a transition in the aspirations of social justice on global scale. The ‘welfare world’ vision of global justice, as it was captured most prominently by the proposals for a New International Economic Order in the mid-1970s, is contrasted with the contemporary ambitions of ‘supply chain ethics’, which seek to infuse transnational corporations with social responsibilities. These visions differ drastically in their ambitions, their epistemologies, and the role they reserve for the state but share a structural outlook on issues of social justice. Following the theme of the Special Issue, the shortcomings and the potential of the current supply chain ethics agenda in addressing the ‘human problems’ associated with corporate irresponsibility are reviewed. The paper suggests that mediating between structure and agency in a way that recontextualises the democratic principle is necessary to challenge power asymmetries in global regimes of production.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"213 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42412161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1982457
L. Knöpfel, Felix Lüth
ABSTRACT The special issue revisits the notion of human problems in Philip C Jessup’s 1956 Transnational Law' Storrs Lectures on Jurisprudence. In order to explore the methodology and analytical utility of human problems and transnational law, the contributions introduce various case studies on corporate (ir)responsibility. This introduction first presents the role of human problems in Jessup’s lecture on transnational law. It then briefly outlines some of the analytical benefits of a transnational human problem perspective in general and in the context of studying issues of corporate (ir)responsibility in particular. A final section provides summaries of the contributions brought together in this special issue.
{"title":"Bringing the human problem back into transnational law: the example of corporate (ir)responsibility","authors":"L. Knöpfel, Felix Lüth","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1982457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1982457","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The special issue revisits the notion of human problems in Philip C Jessup’s 1956 Transnational Law' Storrs Lectures on Jurisprudence. In order to explore the methodology and analytical utility of human problems and transnational law, the contributions introduce various case studies on corporate (ir)responsibility. This introduction first presents the role of human problems in Jessup’s lecture on transnational law. It then briefly outlines some of the analytical benefits of a transnational human problem perspective in general and in the context of studying issues of corporate (ir)responsibility in particular. A final section provides summaries of the contributions brought together in this special issue.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"151 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49613755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1967691
Felix Lüth
ABSTRACT Nowadays, cases involving questions of corporate (ir)responsibility are largely resolved through negotiated settlements. A controversial development in this context is the cross-border rise of procedures akin to US non- and deferred prosecution agreements which allow prosecutors to agree with corporations not to prosecute serious economic crimes. The article uses this example to discuss the relevance of transnational law as an analytical framework for studying domestic criminal justice reforms in a globalised world. It revisits one of the central, albeit less noticed, themes of Philip C Jessup’s seminal 1956 Storrs Lectures on Transnational Law – transnational human problems – and identifies its descriptive and evaluative-critical benefits. The article then investigates to what extent these benefits are reflected in today’s two main theories of transnational law in criminal justice, ultimately finding that Transnational Legal Ordering of Criminal Justice provides a more suitable analytical framework than Transnational Criminal Law in this context.
如今,涉及公司责任问题的案件大多通过协商解决。在这种背景下,一个有争议的进展是,类似于美国不起诉协议和暂缓起诉协议的程序正在跨境兴起,这些协议允许检察官与企业达成协议,不起诉严重的经济犯罪。本文用这个例子来讨论跨国法作为研究全球化世界中国内刑事司法改革的分析框架的相关性。它重新审视了菲利普·C·杰瑟普1956年开创性的斯托尔斯跨国法讲座(Storrs Lectures on Transnational Law)的一个中心主题——跨国人类问题——尽管不太引人注意,并确定了它在描述和评估方面的关键好处。然后,本文调查了这些好处在多大程度上反映在当今刑事司法中的两种主要跨国法理论中,最终发现在这种背景下,刑事司法的跨国法律秩序提供了比跨国刑法更合适的分析框架。
{"title":"Corporate non-prosecution agreements as transnational human problems: transnational law and the study of domestic criminal justice reforms in a globalised world","authors":"Felix Lüth","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1967691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1967691","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Nowadays, cases involving questions of corporate (ir)responsibility are largely resolved through negotiated settlements. A controversial development in this context is the cross-border rise of procedures akin to US non- and deferred prosecution agreements which allow prosecutors to agree with corporations not to prosecute serious economic crimes. The article uses this example to discuss the relevance of transnational law as an analytical framework for studying domestic criminal justice reforms in a globalised world. It revisits one of the central, albeit less noticed, themes of Philip C Jessup’s seminal 1956 Storrs Lectures on Transnational Law – transnational human problems – and identifies its descriptive and evaluative-critical benefits. The article then investigates to what extent these benefits are reflected in today’s two main theories of transnational law in criminal justice, ultimately finding that Transnational Legal Ordering of Criminal Justice provides a more suitable analytical framework than Transnational Criminal Law in this context.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"315 - 333"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59994581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1970470
J. Salminen, Mikko Rajavuori
ABSTRACT Global value chains (‘GVCs’) have become a basic operative unit of economic production. Their development over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has resulted in immense creation of wealth while linking together individuals, companies and economies across the world. But GVCs are also a major cause for environmental degradation, carbon emissions and human rights abuses—the ‘externalities’ of global production that are not captured by existing regulatory frameworks. This paper examines the role of private international law (‘PIL’) in mapping GVCs into specific jurisdictions. The analysis suggests that PIL, focused on individual entities, does not allow a systematic legal approach to GVCs, which are collective entities. This lack of a systematic approach exacerbates the externalities of global production. However, the budding legal operationalisation of GVCs provides a functional-analytical lens to understand, systematise, critique and develop the role of PIL as a fundamental transnational constituent in ordering global production in relation to GVCs and beyond.
{"title":"Private International Law, Global Value Chains and the externalities of transnational production: towards alignment?","authors":"J. Salminen, Mikko Rajavuori","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1970470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1970470","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Global value chains (‘GVCs’) have become a basic operative unit of economic production. Their development over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has resulted in immense creation of wealth while linking together individuals, companies and economies across the world. But GVCs are also a major cause for environmental degradation, carbon emissions and human rights abuses—the ‘externalities’ of global production that are not captured by existing regulatory frameworks. This paper examines the role of private international law (‘PIL’) in mapping GVCs into specific jurisdictions. The analysis suggests that PIL, focused on individual entities, does not allow a systematic legal approach to GVCs, which are collective entities. This lack of a systematic approach exacerbates the externalities of global production. However, the budding legal operationalisation of GVCs provides a functional-analytical lens to understand, systematise, critique and develop the role of PIL as a fundamental transnational constituent in ordering global production in relation to GVCs and beyond.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"230 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45488577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1978204
J. H. Ritter
ABSTRACT Economic organisations rely on processes of organisational knowledge creation in order to gain strategic intelligence, namely the ability to master their chaotic, complex reality. These processes depend critically upon the enactment of organisational models. The article argues that it is precisely from the perspective of knowledge creation that the function of the law of the economic organisation can be understood, leaving room for a reconsideration of the ‘the human problem of corporate (ir)responsibility’. Legal knowledge creation supports its organisational counter-part by supplying legal concepts from which organisational models can be unravelled. In the context of a legal analysis of networks, the legal knowledge creation consists in evolutionary processes that transform the legal concepts of juridical personhood and contract in the ‘light of the network context’. In identifying constellations of a co-extensiveness of organisational and legal knowledge creation the theoretical framework demonstrates the possibility for legal modulation of organisational knowledge creation.
{"title":"Engaging the creativity of law for organisational knowledge creation","authors":"J. H. Ritter","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1978204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1978204","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Economic organisations rely on processes of organisational knowledge creation in order to gain strategic intelligence, namely the ability to master their chaotic, complex reality. These processes depend critically upon the enactment of organisational models. The article argues that it is precisely from the perspective of knowledge creation that the function of the law of the economic organisation can be understood, leaving room for a reconsideration of the ‘the human problem of corporate (ir)responsibility’. Legal knowledge creation supports its organisational counter-part by supplying legal concepts from which organisational models can be unravelled. In the context of a legal analysis of networks, the legal knowledge creation consists in evolutionary processes that transform the legal concepts of juridical personhood and contract in the ‘light of the network context’. In identifying constellations of a co-extensiveness of organisational and legal knowledge creation the theoretical framework demonstrates the possibility for legal modulation of organisational knowledge creation.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"177 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41726383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1967683
Eliana Cusato
ABSTRACT This article considers the distributional effects of public and semi-private arrangements regulating extractive activities in conflict settings. The focus is on transnational legal interventions meant to improve how natural resources are ‘managed’ in fragile, war-torn, and post-conflict countries, namely the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for Diamonds, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Supply Chain of Minerals. Drawing upon a variety of critical traditions, it elucidates the assumptions upon which dominant approaches to ‘conflict minerals’ are premised. In doing so, the article shows how these initiatives fail to challenge the structural and political economic conditions that cause the problems they are intended to address. Further, it argues that, by framing the extractive industry as a ‘partner’ for peace, these legal instruments contribute to the legitimising of its continued operation in post-conflict countries, thereby stabilising the prevailing global structures of power in natural resource governance.
{"title":"Transnational law and the politics of conflict minerals regulation: construing the extractive industry as a ‘partner’ for peace","authors":"Eliana Cusato","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1967683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1967683","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article considers the distributional effects of public and semi-private arrangements regulating extractive activities in conflict settings. The focus is on transnational legal interventions meant to improve how natural resources are ‘managed’ in fragile, war-torn, and post-conflict countries, namely the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for Diamonds, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Supply Chain of Minerals. Drawing upon a variety of critical traditions, it elucidates the assumptions upon which dominant approaches to ‘conflict minerals’ are premised. In doing so, the article shows how these initiatives fail to challenge the structural and political economic conditions that cause the problems they are intended to address. Further, it argues that, by framing the extractive industry as a ‘partner’ for peace, these legal instruments contribute to the legitimising of its continued operation in post-conflict countries, thereby stabilising the prevailing global structures of power in natural resource governance.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"269 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41842499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2021.1909330
M. Kaczmarczyk
ABSTRACT One of the most urgent and widely discussed problems of international organisations is their need for democratic legitimacy. In this article, a novel approach is developed for the study of democracy in international context. This approach is borrowed from sociological theory and focuses on Shmuel Eisenstadt’s and Niklas Luhmann’s views on social differentiation and illustrated through the current debate over the democratic deficits of international arbitration. The proposed differentiation theory provides a dynamic and abstract explanatory framework which apart from offering a conceptual frame of reference for the judicialisation of international relations, makes the concept of democracy more specific and precise. Moreover, in contrast to other theories, it explains the claims for democracy arising out of both differentiation and dedifferentiation processes. Ultimately, this article argues that the claim for democracy is inadequate when applied to international arbitration and obscures its need for other forms of legitimisation.
{"title":"The differentiation of international arbitration and the claim for democracy","authors":"M. Kaczmarczyk","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2021.1909330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2021.1909330","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT One of the most urgent and widely discussed problems of international organisations is their need for democratic legitimacy. In this article, a novel approach is developed for the study of democracy in international context. This approach is borrowed from sociological theory and focuses on Shmuel Eisenstadt’s and Niklas Luhmann’s views on social differentiation and illustrated through the current debate over the democratic deficits of international arbitration. The proposed differentiation theory provides a dynamic and abstract explanatory framework which apart from offering a conceptual frame of reference for the judicialisation of international relations, makes the concept of democracy more specific and precise. Moreover, in contrast to other theories, it explains the claims for democracy arising out of both differentiation and dedifferentiation processes. Ultimately, this article argues that the claim for democracy is inadequate when applied to international arbitration and obscures its need for other forms of legitimisation.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"78 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20414005.2021.1909330","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47385332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}