International Economic Organization

Abstract

International law developed primarily to serve the needs of the governments of “states,” which is to say, to support the rulers of territorially based subject populations, exercising a monopoly within their boundaries of “sovereign” coercive power. Other non-state international organizations have long existed alongside states, such as the Virginia Company, the East India Company, and the Royal African Company, but none of these institutions enjoyed much formal recognition in the development of international legal structures. Now finally these and similar international economic organizations have finally captured the public imagination, and eager academics seek to apply the insights of institutional economics, law and economics, and industrial organization to international law, to demarcate new lines of competence between states and other international organizations.