An Introduction to Comparative Analyses of International Organizations

Abstract

Legal systems, institutions and organizations comprise more than just rules, regulations and laws. They are also made up of individuals that create, implement and regulate those systems, institutions and organizations. Humans themselves, however, are not so easily compartmentalized and will tend to bring their home legal cultures into the international legal order. Additionally, they will tend to create new legal cultures within those international intergovernmental organizations (“IOs”) and fields. But, the interactions and operations of those legal cultures — be they domestic or international, new or old, competing or complementing — will often have significant implications for the processes and functions of those different legal cultures, individually or together. Accordingly, examination of those legal cultures and their interactions is necessary to really understand the international legal order, on its own or in its interactions with domestic systems. This chapter will thus introduce the idea of applying comparative legal cultural analyses to the international legal order, and specifically to IOs — the backbone of the international legal order. Because such analyses are somewhat unusual and little known, this paper will also provide a methodological toolbox for those analyses.

Keywords: international law; international institutions; comparative law

JEL Classification: K33