Tainted Love: The Struggle over Legality in International Relations and International Law

TY - CHAP

T1 - Tainted Love

T2 - The Struggle over Legality in International Relations and International Law

AU - Leander, Anna

AU - Werner, Wouter

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - As this volume testifies, scholars in International Relations (IR) and International Law (IL) are once again engaged in redrawing the boundaries between their disciplines. Taking our cue from the introductory chapter to this volume, we read these attempts at disciplinary boundary-drawing as moves in the struggle over the concept and limits of legality. What at first sight may appear as nothing more than a semantic struggle between academics keen to defend their disciplinary turfs in fact contributes to the construction of specific concepts of law and politics; concepts that are related to the distribution of disciplinary (and disciplining) power. Yet there is something puzzling about these boundary-drawing projects, especially when considering the “legalization” discussion in IR. After strongly advocating legalization as a way to tame anarchy in international relations, core figures in the discussion, including Robert Keohane and Michael Zürn, also express anxiety about the illegitimacy of technocratic legalistic managerial rule; they reinstate the primacy of politics anchored in better rules and procedures. However, by insisting on better rules and procedures, the door they just tried to close on law is reopened. Similarly, leading critical legal scholars such as Martti Koskenniemi and Jan Klabbers, who have devoted considerable energy to demonstrating the political sides of law, also passionately defend international law against incursions from politics (and multidisciplinary scholarship more generally), invoking notions such as virtue ethics, political agency and responsibility to safeguard the integrity of law. However, these invocations are reopening the very door to politics they intended to close. We suggest that these puzzling sides of the IR/IL boundary-drawing amount to nothing less than a double paradox: 1) the paradox that disciplinary border-crossings are accompanied by calls aimed at closing borders; and 2) that in spite of this being so obviously the case, scholars persist in advancing their conception of legality by affirming disciplinary boundaries. Scholars in IR and IL in general seem to be involved in a constant redefinition of their respective disciplinary identities that is at the same time affirming and consolidating the very disciplinary identities that they strive to change. Their relationship therefore appears as fraught as a tainted love from which there is no obvious escape.

AB - As this volume testifies, scholars in International Relations (IR) and International Law (IL) are once again engaged in redrawing the boundaries between their disciplines. Taking our cue from the introductory chapter to this volume, we read these attempts at disciplinary boundary-drawing as moves in the struggle over the concept and limits of legality. What at first sight may appear as nothing more than a semantic struggle between academics keen to defend their disciplinary turfs in fact contributes to the construction of specific concepts of law and politics; concepts that are related to the distribution of disciplinary (and disciplining) power. Yet there is something puzzling about these boundary-drawing projects, especially when considering the “legalization” discussion in IR. After strongly advocating legalization as a way to tame anarchy in international relations, core figures in the discussion, including Robert Keohane and Michael Zürn, also express anxiety about the illegitimacy of technocratic legalistic managerial rule; they reinstate the primacy of politics anchored in better rules and procedures. However, by insisting on better rules and procedures, the door they just tried to close on law is reopened. Similarly, leading critical legal scholars such as Martti Koskenniemi and Jan Klabbers, who have devoted considerable energy to demonstrating the political sides of law, also passionately defend international law against incursions from politics (and multidisciplinary scholarship more generally), invoking notions such as virtue ethics, political agency and responsibility to safeguard the integrity of law. However, these invocations are reopening the very door to politics they intended to close. We suggest that these puzzling sides of the IR/IL boundary-drawing amount to nothing less than a double paradox: 1) the paradox that disciplinary border-crossings are accompanied by calls aimed at closing borders; and 2) that in spite of this being so obviously the case, scholars persist in advancing their conception of legality by affirming disciplinary boundaries. Scholars in IR and IL in general seem to be involved in a constant redefinition of their respective disciplinary identities that is at the same time affirming and consolidating the very disciplinary identities that they strive to change. Their relationship therefore appears as fraught as a tainted love from which there is no obvious escape.

U2 - 10.1017/CBO9781316535134.004

DO - 10.1017/CBO9781316535134.004

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781107145054

SP - 75

EP - 98

BT - The Power of Legality

A2 - Rajkovic, Nikolas M.

A2 - Aalberts, Tanja

A2 - Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -