Lunch seminar with Karen Alter

The Legalization of Global Economic Governance: Contracting, Multilateralism and Unilateralism

Abstract: 

This article defines four legal ideal types of global economic governance– transnational private contracting, interstate contracting, principled multilateralism, and extraterritorial unilateralism–focusing on how the choice among these types excludes actors and implicates public interests. We argue that: 1) states are always making choices at a given moment, intentionally or tacitly, about which legal type governs transnational behavior; 2) these choices have distributional and political consequences; 3) global economic governance combines legal forms within regime complexes to either address or exclude public concerns. The focus on legal form is a way to understand how legalized globalization balances and undermines the balance between private and public rights. While we focus on the consequences for domestic publics and for future negotiations, the four ideal types have implications that reach beyond these questions. After explicating the ideal types, we offer three examples of international regime complexes where three modes of governance display their attributes and operate in tandem: international tax arrangements, international investment, and global health. Examining the modes together, as opposed to focusing only one one mode the exclusion of others, reveals how legal promises made in one venue/mode/moment can be undermined by the legalized rights of the other modes of global economic governance, unless a powerful force overwhelms so as to coordinate the otherwise undermining/centripetal forces of self-interested private rights-claiming. The analysis therefore brings to light the vested legal rights pulling apart the achievement of public objectives, and the political forces as they may be able to reprioritize public-facing objectives.

Speaker bio

Karen J. Alter is the Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations and Professor of Political Science and Law, and co-director Research Group on Global Capitalism and Law at Northwestern University. A longtime specialist on the politics of international law and international courts, and the politics of international regime complexity, Professor Alter has conducted research in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Alter’s newest research focuses on the construction of global economic rules regulating trade and money, how China’s rise is influencing international relations, backlash politics, and US Export Control Politics. From August 2023-July 2024 Professor Alter served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce, sponsored by a CFR International Affairs Fellow for Tenured IR Faculty. Alter is author or editor of six books and more than seventy articles and book chapters on the politics of international law, comparative international courts, and international regime complexity. Alter is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, a former Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and winner of the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship.