Democratic Governance And International Law

PART V CRITICAL APPROACHES.

At the end of the Cold War, international law scholars engaged in furious debate over whether principles of democratic legitimacy had entered international law. Many argued that a 'democratic entitlement' was emerging. Others were skeptical that international practice in democracy promotion was either consistent or sufficiently widespread and many found the idea of democratic entitlement dangerous. Those debates, while ongoing, have not been comprehensively revisited in almost twenty years. Together with an original introduction, this volume collects the leading scholarship of the past two decades on these and other questions. It focuses particular attention on the normative consequences of the recent 'democratic recession' in many regions of the world.

Professor Crawford's inaugural lecture as Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge addresses a number of facets of the relationship between international law and democratic principles. In particular he examines the ways in which international law may or may not underwrite those principles, a subject which has increased greatly in significance as governments and international organisations search for a 'New World Order' in the post Cold War world.

This book explores the right to democracy in international law and contemporary democratic theory, asking whether international law encompasses a substantive or procedural understanding of the notion. The book considers whether there can be considered to be a basis for the right to democracy in international customary law through identification of the relevant State practice and opinio juris, as well as through an evaluation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and whether the relevant provisions might be interpreted as forming customary law. The book then goes on to explore the relevant provisions in international treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights before looking at the role of regional organizations and human rights regimes including the European Court of Human Rights and the Arab human rights regime. Khalifa A. Alfadhel draws on the work of John Rawls in order to put forward a theoretical basis for the right to democracy.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Contrasts democratic and authoritarian approaches to international law, explaining how their interaction will affect the world in the future.

Democracy, Law and Governance details the transformation of the modes of governance of contemporary developed democracies and aims to define the conditions required for promoting public interest in their public policy. Firstly, the volume illustrates why a sound theoretical approach to the concept of law results in opening up the theory of law to the debate on governance in the social sciences. Secondly, it reconstructs the underpinnings of recent debate on governance, focusing on the pragmatist turn that has marked efforts to overcome the inadequacies of both the economic and the deliberative approaches. In fulfilling this second goal, it examines the advances yielded by the pragmatist turn as well as its limitations, and concludes by proposing a theoretical approach for dealing with them. This illuminating book applies recent research in both theory of law and theory of governance to deepen the analytic impact of the recent pragmatist revival.

The promotion of democracy is today a familiar feature of foreign policy, and an accepted part of the activities of international organizations. Should international law join in this move to promote democratic political arrangements? If so, on what basis, and with which of the many competingconceptions of democracy? Drawing on an eclectic range of source material, the author examines current debates about the emergence of an international legal 'norm of democratic governance', and considers how proposals for such a norm might be rearticulated to meet some of the concerns to which theygive rise. She also uses these debates to illustrate some more general points about approaches to the study of international law. In doing so, she seeks to defend an approach to international legal scholarship that takes its cue from the tradition of ideology critique.