How domestic legal systems respond to international local government law: Between accommodation, resistance and transformation

Abstract

Cities play a key role in today’s multi-level order. Challenging the state-centric perspective of international law, ‘international local government law’ shows how global institutions engage with cities directly. These institutions define how the ideal city should be organized, how its policies should be made and how its relations with central authorities should be shaped. Yet, as cities are subject to national constitutional constraints and local level dynamics, this vertical interaction cannot be fully understood without considering the domestic legal system in which each city is embedded. This chapter explores how domestic public law responds to the model of the ideal city pursued by international local government law. We present a tentative framework advancing three possible responses of domestic legal systems to international local government law, namely, resistance, accommodation and transformation. A closer look at these responses reveals several challenges to the effectiveness and legitimacy of international local government law.