The Psychology of International Law: An Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Public international law scholarship opens evermore to social science theories and methodologies, but the implications of cognitive research and behavioural economics have not been systematically explored, even though they have been successfully applied to domestic legal issues and are increasingly used in public policy and regulation. In this symposium, we aim to fill two research gaps: first, international law and economics and international political economy rarely use behavioural insights, while behavioural law and economics lacks international dimensions, and, second, international political psychology sidesteps the importance of international norms. This introduction surveys the main psychological angles employed in the articles of the symposium as well as the difficulties envisioned in this research agenda of applying psychology to international law and using experiments for the study of international law. These difficulties notwithstanding, behavioural studies have generated many insights that have the potential to greatly enrich our understanding of international law.