This book provides critical reflections on the interplay between politics and law in an increasingly transnationalized global political economy. It focuses 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. The expert contributors advance the 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. The volume interest students, academics and professionals of law, political science, IR, international political economy and sociology.

A. Claire Cutler is Professor of International Law and International Relations in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Thomas Dietz is Professor of International Relations and International Law in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Münster, Germany.

Foreword

Liberalism's Global Mirror: Worldwide Contracting and 'No Alternative'?

[Peer Zumbansen]

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract: Introduction and Analytical Framework

[A. Claire Cutler and Thomas Dietz]

PART I: Analytical and Theoretical Dimensions of Private Transnational Governance by Contract

Chapter 2

Contract as Normative Regulation and the Implied Rule of Law

Christopher May

Chapter 3

Governance by Contract from a Perspective of Power: The Case of Land Grabbing

[Doris Fuchs and Anne Hennings]

PART II: Trade and Production: Global Value Chains and Transnational Private Governance by Contracts

Chapter 4

Private Transnational Governance in Global Value Chains: Contract as a Neglected Dimension

[A. Claire Cutler]

Chapter 5

The New Gatekeeper: Ethical Audits as a Mechanism of Global Value Chain Governance

[Genevieve LeBaron, Jane Lister, and Peter Dauvergne]

Chapter 6

Relational Contracts 2.0: Efficiency and Power

[Thomas Dietz]

PART III: Trade, Investment, and Dispute Settlement: Arbitration as Transnational Private Governance by Contract

Chapter 7

Arbitration as Transnational Governance: Legitimacy Beyond Contract

[Fabien Gélinas]

Chapter 8

Private Arbitration as a Mechanism for the Construction of Contractual Norms in Private-Public Relationships: The Case of Investor-State Arbitration

[Edward Cohen]

Chapter 9

Theorizing Private Transnational Governance by Contract in the Investor-State Regime

[A.Claire Cutler and David Lark]

PART IV: Sectoral Specifications of Private Transnational Governance by Contract

Chapter 10

Contractual Governance and Sectoral Fragmentation of Transnational Contract Law

[Joshua Karton]

Chapter 11

Transnational Carbon Contracting: Why Law's Invisibility Matters

[Natasha Affolder]

Chapter 12

Merchants of Hegemony: Neoliberalism and the Legitimacy of Private Contractual Governance in the Transnational Cotton Trade

[Amy A. Quark]

Chapter 13

Regulating Private Military Security Companies by Contract: Between Anarchy and Hierarchy?

[A. Claire Cutler and Stephanie Law]

Conclusion

Chapter 14

Empire through Contract: A Private International Law Perspective

[Horatia Muir Watt]