International Law and Global Governance

The increasing pace of globalisation and resultant global interdependence has renewed debate about the role that various stakeholders should have in global governance, and about how relationships between states and global issues should be regulated, if at all. This work examines the bases upon which international law operates; the consequential development of a positivist system of international law, and the impact that significant developments in the twentieth century have had on the demands placed on international law. It finds that the prevailing horizontal interstate system of global governance, whereby international law is created predominantly through consent, is insufficient for the future of global governance, because states act predominantly to serve their individual foreign policy objectives, and there is a lack of objective law and policies. The work assesses a series of models of global governance proposed over a period of many years, identifies schools of thought and analyses each one according to their capacity to achieve global objectives. From this analysis, the author proposes future institutional modifications necessary to improve global governance.