Around the pyramid: Political-Theoretical challenges to law in the age of global governance

Abstract

The idea of global governance has become central to debates on international relations. It has been hailed as the most performing strategy to articulate the multiple, concurring, sometimes conflicting interests of the increased number of global players. The relevance of this popularity goes much beyond the practical reasons often invoked in favor of its adoption. It bespeaks a process of a deep transformation of the very theoretical frameworks within which Law, in general, and international Law, in particular, have been conceived. This paper argues that prevailing understandings of global governance risk contributing to depoliticize the exchange between States, as it usually overemphasizes the supposedly technical, objective dimension of performance indexes while underemphasizing the political choices embodied in their design. It has as its main theoretical sources the works of OST and KERCHOVE1, SUPIOT2, Foucault (1998), SOUSA SAN-TOS & RODRIGUEZ-GARAVITO3.