Global legal pluralism and the temporality of soft law

Abstract

The global legal field is constituted by a wide array of laws, guidelines, recommendations, practices, and standards which are enforced in multiple, overlapping, and sometimes inconsistent ways. Moreover, it is constantly changing as some standards become solidified into rules that have increasingly strong normative and institutional support, while others fall into disuse. Understanding the global legal order requires attending to its temporality. This article emphasizes the temporality of the global legal order by tracing the creation of an index to measure economic and human development. I use the example of Human Development Index to show how, over time, a radical theory can become a widely accepted perspective that influences policy-makers and publics. The index began from a general theory of human development and was translated into a system of ranking that gradually became authoritative for policy-makers and publics.