The threads (or threats?) of a managerial approach: Afterword to Laurence Boisson de Chazournes' Foreword

Abstract

In her EJIL Foreword article, Boisson de Chazournes gives an optimistic account of the proliferation of international courts and tribunals. She argues that the proliferation has been a constant and desired feature of international dispute settlement and that problems arising from it can be resolved through 'internal communication' among judicial bodies and through various procedural rules preventing jurisdictional overlaps. These tools, richly illustrated by numerous examples primarily from the area of international economic law, attest, in the author's view, to the emergence of a new, managerial approach. In my Afterword, I consider what this managerial approach consists of and how it relates to the other 'managerial theories' known in international law-the managerial model of Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes and managerialism described by Martti Koskenniemi. I argue that the managerial approach is close to the former theory and, as such, is also vulnerable to the reservations raised against it (formalism, excessive optimism). I further argue that the managerial approach is not identical to managerialism but that the article, placing so much emphasis on formal, procedural rules, might not do enough to prevent the confusion between the two.