Emerging Powers Global Justice And International Economic Law

The book assesses emerging powers’ influence on international economic law and analyses whether their rhetoric of reforming this ‘unjust’ order translates into concrete reforms. The questions at the heart of the book surround the extent to which Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa individually and as a bloc (BRICS) provide alternative regulatory ideas to those of ‘Western’ States and whether they are able to convert their increased power into influence on global regulation. To do so, the book investigates two broader case studies, namely, the reform of international investment agreements and WTO reform negotiations since the start of the Doha Development Round. As a general outcome, it finds that emerging powers do not radically challenge established law. ‘Third World’ rhetoric mostly does not translate into practice and rather serves to veil economic interests. Still, emerging powers provide for some alternative regulatory ideas, already leading to a diversification of international economic law. As a general rule, they tend to support norms that allow host States much policy space which could be used to protect and fulfil socio-economic human rights, especially – but not only – in the Global South.

The fairness of institutions of global economic governance ranks among the most pressing issues of our time.

This book uses three approaches to examine the different ways to conceptualize the problem of global justice and its relationship to trade law, and to international economic law and economic fairness more generally, in view of globalization and the diversity of normative traditions in the world.

Since the beginnings of the GATT and the Bretton Woods institutions, and on to the creation of the WTO, states have continued to develop institutions and legal infrastructure to promote global interdependence. International lawyers are experts in understanding how these institutions operate in practice, but they tend to uncritically accept comparative advantage as the principal normative criterion to justify these institutions. In contrast, moral and political philosophers have developed accounts of global justice, but these accounts have had relatively little influence on international legal scholarship and on institutional design. This volume reflects the results of a symposium held at Tillar House, the American Society of International Law headquarters in Washington, DC, in November 2008, which brought together philosophers, legal scholars and economists to discuss the problems of understanding international economic law from the standpoints of rights and justice, in particular from the standpoint of distributive justice.

"Global justice is one of the most important subjects in law and political theory today. What principles of justice might tell us about the actual practices of the WTO and other international economic institutions is of vital importance to states and their citizens. This volume reflects the results of a symposium held at Tillar House, the ASIL headquarters in Washington, DC, in November 2008 which brought together philosophers, legal scholars, and economists to discuss the problems of understanding international economic law from the standpoint of rights, justice, and economic efficiency. The book makes advances in developing the normative criterion for ecaluation and justifying the international economic legal order"--

This book explains the rise of China, India, and Brazil in the international trading system, and the implications for trade law.

Charts emerging countries' dissatisfaction with the world order and offers perspectives for a new international economic governance regime.

This volume contributes to the growing debate surrounding the impact that the rising powers may or may not be having on contemporary global political and economic governance. Through studies of Brazil, India, China, and other important developing countries within their respective regions such as Turkey and South Africa, we raise the question of the extent to which the challenge posed by the rising powers to global governance is likely to lead to an increase in democracy and social justice for the majority of the world’s peoples. By addressing such questions, the volume explicitly seeks to raise the broader normative question of the implications of this emergent redistribution of economic and political power for the sustainability and legitimacy of the emerging 21st century system of global political and economic governance. Questions of democracy, legitimacy, and social justice are largely ignored or under-emphasised in many existing studies, and the aim of this collection of papers is to show that serious consideration of such questions provides important insights into the sustainability of the emerging global political economy and new forms of global governance. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.