Debate of Institutional Fragmentation and Structural Biases in the International Legal Scholarship: Going Beyond Eurocentrism

Abstract

Fragmentation — as a powerful and defining metaphor of international legal scholarship about rule complexity and regime proliferation — is not a new issue in international legal studies, but it remains pivotal. This article focuses on the phenomenon and debate of institutional fragmentation to explore the structural biases in both the Western-dominated international law and some fields of Eurocentric international legal scholarship. By revisiting the phenomenon and rhetoric of institutional fragmentation, the so-called institutional fragmentation phenomenon manifests the ontological ethos of international law in a globalized and still decentralized world society, and international law has not been threatened by or lost in this phenomenon. Institutional fragmentation is an exaggerated and projected rhetoric, and the benefits and rationalities of the institutional fragmentation phenomenon are underestimated. It exposes the structural biases in the Western-dominated international law and some fields of the Eurocentric international legal scholarship (especially expansionist, progressive and idealistic arguments of the potentials of the contemporary international law), as well as their coproduction for the legitimacy of the current Eurocentric international law. Going beyond Eurocentrism by renouncing those expansionist and progressive arguments is imperative for the future of both international law and international legal scholarship.