A. Claire Cutler
The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract
April 19, 2018
12:00–1:00 p.m.
LAW 3750
GLAS welcomed Professor A. Claire Cutler (University of Victoria) to discuss her edited volume on the emergence and operation of new forms of governance that are developing through a variety of transnational contractual practices, institutions, and laws in multiple areas of economic activity. Professor Cutler described the book's intellectual inspiration, arguing that contractual governance is a largely unrecognized determinative vector of power in the global political economy. Contracts determine winners and losers in the global economy and have profound distributional consequences. However, she argued that conventional theories in international relations and international law miss this important dimension of global governance and thus fail to see how contractual governance is a central modality of transnational capitalism and a mechanism of new constitutional governance.
About A. Claire Cutler
Claire Cutler is a Professor of International Law and Relations in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria. She is a graduate of UBC (BA; PhD), the LSE (MSc) and McGill (LLB). Professor Cutler specializes in the intersection of international law and international politics and is interested in developing critical theory in international law. Her contemporary research focuses upon institutions and processes for dispute resolution in international law. In particular, she is examining the trend toward the privatization of global governance and its implications for the future of democratic institutions and processes. In addition to her many articles, chapters, and reviews, Professor Cutler has previously published multiple books, including: New Constitutionalism and World Order (Cambridge University Press, 2014; with Stephen Gill), and Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract
The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract (Routledge, 2017) is the first volume in the Routledge Series on the Politics of Transnational Law. This edited volume provides critical reflections on the interplay between politics and law in an increasingly transnationalized global political economy. It focuses specifically on the emergence and operation of new forms of governance that are developing through a variety of transnational contractual practices, institutions, and laws in multiple sectors and areas of economic activity. Interdisciplinary in nature, the volume includes contributions from law, political science, sociology, and international politics, with the focus on the political foundations of transnational contract being both original and path-breaking. Placing power at the center of the analysis, the volume reveals the heterogeneous landscape of contemporary law-making and the different kinds of politics giving rise to this form of global ordering. As the contributors note, this new form of governance requires a different type of political theory and legal theory, with the volume advancing understanding of the analytical, theoretical and normative dimensions of private transnational governance by contract, making a valuable contribution to new theory in law and politics.