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Standards, Networks, and the Political Economy of International Lawmaking: A Response to Stavros Gadinis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Paul B. Stephan*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia School of Law
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Three Pathways to Global Standards broadens our understanding of structures that undergird international cooperation. Stavros Gadinis argues that different kinds of lawmaking networks propagate differently. Private networks depend on market success, in the sense that the demand for their products rests on competition in the private sector. Regulators succeed when they cooperate with true peers. States use power to work their will. I have some second-order criticisms of the article, offered in the spirit of respectful engagement with good scholarship. These reservations, however, do not detract from a view that Gadinis has identified significant issues in international relations and has proposed useful theses about them as well as good strategies for their validation.

Type
Symposium on Stavros Gadinis, “Three Pathways to Global Standards: Private, Regulator, and Ministry Networks”
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2015

References

1 Gadinis, Stavros, Three Pathways to Global Standards: Private, Regulator, and Ministry Networks, 109 AJIL 1 (2015)Google Scholar.

2 Verdier, Pierre-Hugues, Transnational Regulatory Networks and Their Limits, 34 Yale J. Int’l L. 113 (2009)Google Scholar; The Political Economy of International Financial Regulation, 88 Ind. L.J. 1405 (2013)Google Scholar. Gadinis himself has expressed some skepticism about the normative appeal of these networks. Gadinis, Stavros, The Politics of Competition in International Financial Regulation, 49 Harv. Int’l L.J. 447 (2008)Google Scholar.

3 E.g., Brummer, Chris, How International Financial Law Works (And How It Doesn’t), 99 Geo. L.J. 257 (2011)Google Scholar; Gordon, Richard K., On the Use and Abuse of Standards for Law: Global Governance and Offshore Financial Centers, 88 N.C. L. Rev. 501 (2010)Google Scholar; Blazejewski, Kenneth S., The FATF and Its Institutional Partners: Improve the Effectiveness and Accountability of Transgovernmental Networks, 22 Temp. Int’l & Comp. L.J. 1 (2008)Google Scholar.

4 One of my favorite explorations of this distinction is Hathaway, Oona A., Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?, 111 Yale L.J. 1935 (2002)Google Scholar. The discomfort and pushback that this article generated suggests, at least to me, that Hathaway was on to something important.

5 For a compilation, see Antitrust Cooperation Agreements, The United States Department of Justice.

6 Verdier, Pierre, Mutual Recognition in International Finance, 52 Harv. Int’l L.J. 55 (2011)Google Scholar.

7 Brown, Stephen J. et al., Survival, 50. J. Fin. 853 (1995)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

8 Schwartz, Alan & Scott, Robert E., The Political Economy of Private Legislatures, 143 U. Pa. L. Rev. 595 (1995)Google Scholar. For application of these insights to international lawmaking, see Stephan, Paul B., The Futility of Unification and Harmonization in International Commercial Law, 39 Va. J. Int’l L. 743 (1999)Google Scholar.

9 NRDC v. EPA, 464 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2006).

10 Case C-327/91, Fr. v. Comm’n, 1994 E.C.R. I-3641.