Political economy of international law : towards a holistic model of state behavior

Political Economy (PE) has been used in the national realm to understand political outcomes, including laws and jurisprudence applied to all substantive matters. PE identifies the interests of relevant actors as well as the characteristics of the institutions through which they pursue their interests. However, the law in action ultimately sets incentives and channels interests. International Political Economy (IPE), although using a two-level analysis, that is, the interaction between national politics and the behavior of States on the international plane, has been largely confined to international economic relations as a subject matter. Furthermore, the legal dimension is predominantly missing in IPE scholarship, although international law has the potential to reorder values and interests and influence behavior within the national realm. In order to understand the many facets of international law, we develop a model extending the IPE approach to all subject matters of international law and including international law´s behavioral force in the analysis of State behavior.