Here is an interesting essay on International Law and how the U.S. and Europe arrived at their different perspectives:
wwics.si.edu
The author argues that International law is a threat to democracy and to the hopes of democratic politics all over the world.
From the article:
There is, among international lawyers, a hazy notion that the emergence of the international community in the world of law and politics is itself a democratic development. The unfortunate reality, however, is that international law is a threat to democracy and to the hopes of democratic politics all over the world. For some, that may be a reason to support internationalism; for others, a reason to oppose it. Either way, the fundamental conflicts between democracy and international law must be recognized.
The United Nations and the other institutions of international law take world government as their ideal. In theory, there’s no necessary conflict between democracy and the ideal of a world government. A world government could be perfectly democratic—if there were world democracy. But at present, there is no world democracy, and, as a consequence, international governance organizations are, at present, necessarily and irremediably antidemocratic.
The antidemocratic qualities of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other international governance organizations—their centralization, their opacity, their remoteness from popular or representative politics, their elitism, their unaccountability—are well known. Internationalists counter this criticism by pointing to the growing influence of “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) in international law circles, as if these equally unaccountable, self-appointed, unrepresentative organizations somehow spoke for world public opinion. But the fundamentally antidemocratic nature of international governance is not merely a small hole that NGOs might plug. World government in the absence of world democracy is necessarily technocratic, bureaucratic, diplomatic—everything but democratic.
Nor are international organizations undemocratic only in themselves; they undermine the hopes and vitality of democratic politics elsewhere. The point is familiar to every nation in Latin America that has seen its internal policies dictated by IMF or World Bank directives. To an increasing extent, democratic politics throughout the developing world is being displaced by a relentless demand for competitiveness and growth, which are authoritatively interpreted by international organs to require the implementation of designated social, political, and economic policies (so far, these have had rather mixed success in delivering competitiveness and growth, though they have contributed to several national catastrophes, as in Argentina).
The irony is that the United States remains the world’s greatest champion of internationalism in economic affairs. Weaker countries correctly perceive U.S.-led marketization programs as deeply undercutting their own ability to decide for themselves what their social and economic policies should be. To be sure, the United States does not exactly force economic policy on other countries. Ruling elites agree to the emasculation of their countries’ politics in order to get their hands on the money. But the result is the same: Democracy is hollowed out. |
