'The End of the Global Rule of Law?' by Professor Andrew Hurrell

Lecture summary: Global order is moving towards great instability and possibly towards greater conflict, with the return of geopolitics and heightened nationalism in almost all of the major states in the system, with the structural instabilities and inequalities of global capitalism, and with new and disruptive patterns of social and political mobilization. Existing international institutions are under immense stress with the frequent invocation of terms such as  gridlock, stagnation, or fragmentation. This is true of the most development and hitherto successful institutions (such as the EU); it is true of some of the most fundamental sets of legal rules (such as those relating to the use of force); and it is true even of those areas where the alleged ‘imperatives’ of global cooperation have seemed most evident (as with climate change).  Increased politicization is certainly visible at the domestic level, with populist mobilization in the US and Europe against globalization and global governance, new forms of domestic political cleavages, and far greater space and success for xenophobic and nationalist parties, groups and regimes.  It is also visible at the international level,  with direct geopolitical rivalries (South China Sea, Ukraine, NE Asia), increased contestation at the regional level, and the spill over of such geopolitical rivalries into other areas such as cyber space or international economic relations such as trade and foreign investment. And, of course, the future direction of US foreign policy remains dangerously unpredictable.

This lecture will address three questions:  First, what are the drivers of the present crisis?  Although nationalism and identity politics stress what is particular and distinctive, the fact that these changes are occurring is many different places across the world strongly suggest that systemic factors and forces are at play. So we need to think about how best, analytically, to make sense of these systemic drivers. And we need to place them in a broader and longer-term historical perspective. Does it make sense to think in terms of analogies with the 1930s or the 1970s?  Second, how has the idea of the global rule been understood in the post-Cold War world?  Before concluding that the only choice is between a particular view of the so-called global liberal order and renewed conflict and chaos, we need to ask about the different roles that international law has played, or might play, within a far more strongly global international society. And third, what can we learn from looking in more detail at four areas: the nuclear order, the laws of war, intervention, and complex economic governance? What can we learn about the capacity of different areas of law and governance to withstand turbulent times? What is the relationship between power-political (dis)order and the different roles of international law and international institutions?

Andrew Hurrell is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College. He was elected to the British Academy in 2011 and to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2010. He is a Delegate of Oxford University Press and a member of the Finance Committee (the board of the company).

His book, On Global Order. Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society (published by Oxford University Press) was the winner of International Studies Association Prize for Best Book in the field of International Relations in 2009. Other publications include: (with Ngaire Woods), Inequality, Globalization and World Politics (1999); and (with Louise Fawcett), Regionalism in World Politics (1995).

He was named in the 2011 Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) survey as one of top twenty academics to have made the most influential contribution to IR over the previous five years, and was one of only two non-US based academics in that group. He is Member of the Long Range Planning Committee of the International Studies Association.

Audio

Duration: 43 mins 53 secs

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