Burman University recently held a book launch for Politicial Science Instructor Marc Froese’s new academic book Sovereign Rules and the Politics of International Economic law.
In this book, which is typically meant for educators, students and academics, Froese sets up to explain how sovereign governments use international guidelines to help guide trade, policy and law.
“In order to get to a place where we can talk about a global rule of law, we need to talk about the way we talk about law. In particular, we need to talk about the way that experts talk about law,” Froese said in synopsis sent to the Lacombe Express.
According to Froese, academia has previously tended to use specialized fields of study to help explain global rule of law including history, law and economics. This has since evolved into fields like political science and international political economy (IPE).
Froese explained that the creation of silos of study has allowed researchers to gain specialized and specific information about how international relations are governed, but it has also meant that experts have spent less time researching fields of study outside of where they chose to focus.
One of Froese main purposes for writing this book is to show the value of scholars using other fields of study to augment their own research.
“As the complexity of the world increases, our ways of understanding it become more interdisciplinary. We are better at understanding the world if we are able to view it in multiple dimensions,” Froese said.
This type of thinking also has impacts on how researchers study trade — the most recent example being the signing of the USMCA, which replaces NAFTA, signed between Canada, the United States and Mexico.
“While political scientists like myself are interested in trade, thinking deeply about trade in multiple dimensions – the political, the economic, and the legal – provides new ways to think about the forces driving the development of our interdependent world,” Forese said. “Political economists have mastered the first two dimensions – politics and economics; I’m suggesting that we dive into the third dimension – law.”
Froese also argues for lessening the divide between the way we think about international law and political processes.
“International politics around trade and investment regulation increasingly takes place in a legal frame,” he said. “We have norms for carrying out negotiations, and rules for settling disputes that arise.
“I call this development of international economic law a shift from politics and law, to the politics of economic law.”
The develop of international economic law and practise is something that must be taken with great care, according to Froese.
“The care we take with creating these institutions ought to mirror the important role they play in shaping our interconnected societies,” he said. “The right rules may not completely protect us from making the mistakes that led to the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism. But they are a necessary tool if we wish to detect and avoid similar potential disasters in the 21st century.”
Sovereign Rules and the Politics of International Economic law is available through Amazon and other book retailers.
todd.vaughan@lacombeexpress.com
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