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AbstractThe 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.

The international rule of law is a political system of governance. It rests on the expectation that governments will abide by their legal obligations and so defines what counts as appropriate behavior for states. The relationship between law and politics in global governance is better understood as an empire of global legalism than as an anarchic world of sovereign states. Legal justification is the lingua franca of legitimation contests among governments, as states strive to show that their preferred policies are lawful and that those they oppose are unlawful. Seeing the world this way helps to show the political content of international law: neither a neutral framework that sustains all viewpoints nor an inherently progressive contribution to global order, international law is a political system of governance that advances some interests at the expense of others, and our attention should be directed toward assessing which interests are served by the turn to global legalism and at whose expense.

When an international crisis erupts it is common to hear experts say
that the situation would be improved if all parties uphold their
international legal obligations. From the Syrian war to Burma's massacres to
Guantánamo torture, faithful compliance with the law of nations is often
prescribed as part of the cure for policies gone wrong. My work is motivated
by curiosity about how international law comes to be seen as a universal
good and its effects when invoked as "good medicine for bad policies."
Compliance with international law often appears in policy and scholarly
analyses like a magical machine that transforms hot disagreements about what
should be done into cool solutions that serve the interests of everyone. My
work examines this idea with a degree of skepticism and holds it up against
some empirical cases. I suggest a return to pragmatic realism regarding the
politics behind the international rule of law.