Critical Theory and Practice in International Economic Law and the New Global Governance

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between academic research and engagement with policy and political practices, seen through the author’s recollections of his personal experiences extending over half a century working in the field of international economic law. While stressing the importance of an interaction of theory and practice, it also emphasises the need to maintain academic independence and a research perspective, based on reflexive methodology (situating the various actors and their positions in the field) and immanent critique (close analysis of the self-understandings of practitioners in a field and detailed examination of their practices, contrasting the two). It traces the changing character of the relationship between research and political practice, and the increased need for engagement especially by critical scholars of international economic law with critical political practice. This need stems from the characteristics of global governance in the current era, dominated by corporatist public-private structures controlled by small elites, and confronting complex problems that place an increased importance on specialist expertise. This is often depoliticised as technocratic, creating a wide gap between such expert knowledge and the rhetoric of political debate.