Reinforcing the (Neo-) Hobbesian Representations of International Law

Abstract

Torn between their European origins and the appeal to values on the one hand and their reluctance - inspired by their own experience - to any forcible transfer of values on the other hand, a few Eastern European legal scholars (including Russian scholars) have offered some additional support for the interest-based and (neo-) Hobbesian conceptions of the international legal order, thereby challenging the mainstream liberal and constitutionalist conception of international law. Although different in many other respects, their interest-based conception of international law undeniably has an common denominator with that of those scholars who try to reconcile the undoubted capacity of international law to transform societies with those legal traditions of the world averse to anything that looks like a transfer of 'Western values'. If this is true, the abovementioned Eastern European scholars have proven more ‘universalist’ than many of their Western European and American counterparts.

Keywords: International Law, Eastern Europe, Values, Interest, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, Cosmopolitanism