Elliot Posner

Research project

Soft Law and International Ordering

Project summary

Has the post-war international order finally met its match? Initially set up by the United States and its allies, the institutions at the order’s core seemed remarkably buoyant in the quarter century following the Cold War. Can they sustain order in a newly multipolar world and in the face of rising economic nationalism? Most of the existing research focuses on the durability of treaty-based international organizations, like the World Trade Organization with binding international “hard law” and dispute settlement mechanisms. Comparatively little research has been devoted to the vast and expanding web of less formal forums that rely on “soft law” (i.e. voluntary standards) and “enforcement” by peer review, monitoring, deliberation, bargaining and persuasion. The reliance on such non-binding standards and the forums that create them has proliferated and may be found in domains as disparate as the environment, food safety and data privacy. My research area – financial regulation – stands out as an exemplar case. While some praise voluntary governance for its potential flexibility and technical robustness, others worry that its ordering effects only pertain under conditions special to the late 20th century. Will non-treaty-based, voluntary institutions be a source of international stability or instability for the 21st century? For answers, the proposed research project will first turn to the European Union and then to international financial institutions. My suspicion is that the distribution of autonomy among national representatives is a key factor that determines when these kinds of forums work as ordering institutions and when they do not.