Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. The Conceptual Metaphor 'Coalition Of The Willing'; 3. Testing The Frame: The Genealogy Of A Catchphrase; 4. Global Security Governance By Posse: The Proliferation Security Initiative & Co.; 5. Coalitions Of The Willing In Context: The Interplay Between Formality And Informality; 6. Coalitions Of The Willing And The Role Of Law In The DeFormalized Global Complex; 7. Conclusion
Cities and local governments have become both important sites for international development as well as actors which aspire to shape the practice in this field. This paper retraces the emergence of cities and local governments as having this dual character, in order to provide the ground for a more forward-looking deliberation on some of the emerging themes on the role of cities in and for international law and development today. We see in particular a friction between two seemingly competing and broader understandings of global development, in both of which cities play a prominent role: the SDGs as adopted in 2015, and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The SDGs are the most important multilateral articulation of ideas of development today. To this extent, they are considerably shaped by the long shadow of the post-Cold War era and the shifting priorities of influential actors like the United States, the European Union, but also increasingly vocal states from the 'Global South'. The BRI follows a different idea of international development, built around the notions of non-interference and 'win-win cooperation.' What unites these two blueprints for global development is that international law, as traditionally understood, does not seem to take center stage. Or rather, we wish to expound, it may be a new type of international law which emerges from these global constellations of international development which comes not only, but also from below.
The role of domestic courts in the application of international law is one of the most vividly debated issues in contemporary international legal doctrine. However, the methodology of interpretation of international norms used by these courts remains underexplored. In particular, the application of the Vienna rules of treaty interpretation by domestic courts has not been sufficiently assessed so far. Three case studies (from the US Supreme Court, the Mexican Supreme Court, and the European Court of Justice) show the diversity of approaches in this respect. In the light of these case studies, the article explores the inevitable tensions between two opposite, yet equally legitimate, normative expectations: the desirability of a common, predictable methodology versus the need for flexibility in adapting international norms to a plurality of domestic environments.
