Governing Without Consensus

Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett.

Private law has long been the focus of efforts to explain wider developments of law in an era of globalisation. As consumer transactions and corporate activities continue to develop with scant regard to legal and national boundaries, private law theorists have begun to sketch and conceptualise the possible architecture of a transnational legal theory. Drawing a detailed map of the mixed regulatory landscape of 'hard' and 'soft' laws, official, unofficial, direct and indirect modes of regulation, rules, recommendations and principles as well as exploring the concept of governance through disclosure and transparency, this book develops a theoretical framework of transnational legal regulation. Rough Consensus and Running Code describes and analyses different law-making regimes currently observable in the transnational arena. Its core aim is to reassess the transnational regulation of consumer contracts and corporate governance in light of a dramatic proliferation of rule-creators and compliance mechanisms that can no longer be clearly associated with either the 'state' or the 'market'. The chosen examples from two of the most dynamic legal fields in the transnational arena today serve as backdrops for a comprehensive legal theoretical inquiry into the changing institutional and normative landscape of legal norm-creation.

Labour's 1997 victory was widely credited to the party's reinvention of itself as New Labour. This book argues that the transformation of the Labour Party is best understood as the product of Thatcherism, and marks the emergence of a new consensus in British politics.

'Peace Without Consensus' demonstrates that the rise of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was not 'inevitable'. Rather, it argues that critics who blame Northern Ireland's power-sharing institutions for the electoral triumph of the political 'extremes' in 2003 have not fully considered how the US, British and Irish governments contributed to this outcome. Through interviews with key US, British and Irish officials this groundbreaking analysis, which represents the first examination of the Bush administration's vital role in the peace process, demonstrates that Washington and Dublin were considering a deal between the DUP and Sinn Féin as early as 2002. Profiled in the Guardian, the Observer, BBC Radio Four, the Irish Independent and in Henry McDonald's 'Gunsmoke and Mirrors', Mary-Alice C. Clancy's theoretically informed and empirically grounded book presents new and salient lessons for other regions embroiled in conflict and should be read by all those interested in Northern Ireland's peace process and US foreign policy.

Openness implies bottom-up empowerment and top-down transparency. The Paradox of Openness analyses the tensions encountered when openness is applied to the quest for democracy and markets, freedom and truth, compliance and transparency, and consensus and dissent in progressive Nordic societies.

A world government capable of controlling nation-states has never evolved, but governance does underlie order among states and gives direction to problems arising from global interdependence. This book examines the ideological bases and behavioural patterns of this governance without government.