The New Development Of Theories And Practice Of Compliance With International Law

Why does the sovereign states comply with international law, and how to comply with international law should be regard as effective compliance. The issues of comply with international law have become one of the most important academic topic in both international law and international relations, especially in interdisciplinary field. On a practical level, although the number of treaties and obligations of subjects of international law continue to increase, but the signing of the treaty does not mean fulfilling their obligations, while traditional safeguard measures such as enforcement do not apply to the whole field of international law, and in more cases implementation of international law rely on the states to comply voluntarily. Meanwhile innovations are ongoing in compliance regimes of contemporary international law at different levels such as multilateral, regional, bilateral, soft law, non-governmental models. The thesis attempts to explore the new development of the theories and practice of international law from the perspective of compliance.The main body of the thesis is consisted of four chapters, apart from the introduction and conclusion part.The opening part is an introduction, which outlines and explains the background, research ideas, structural arrangement as well as research methods, shows major historic developments, such as the onset of the Cold War, the proliferation of international institutions in the1970s and80s, the collapse of the Soviet Union in1989, and the terrorist attacks of September11,2001, have each rekindled and reshaped the compliance debate. Meanwhile this part also briefly reviewed the related academic literature on theories of compliance with international law.Chapter I firstly distinguishes the terms between compliance, obligations, implementation and effectiveness, and emphasizes the study is to explore the impact of international law on behavior of states comply with international law, which means the causal link between international law and national behavior. This thesis selects and reviews the representative theories since the late1990s, including the foreign policy cost-benefit analysis revisited, the legitimacy and fairness in international law, new sovereignty and compliance management, transnational legal process and international liberal theory. Meanwhile law and economics in the study of international legal compliance issues despite a late start, but the workings are becoming more and more significant with the rapid development of research methods analogizing from domestic law and economic studies to shaping the theory framework in the study of international legal compliance, which represents the latest trends in the field.Chapter Ⅱ reviews the compliance regimes from multilateral treaties of human rights, environment protection, arms control and disarmament. The methods to ensure compliance with international law constitute a very complex array of different measures, confrontation and non-confrontational, formal and informal, centralized and decentralized, national and international, and so on. Compliance regimes or procedures associated with the multilateral treaties of the different legalization stages combine different characteristics:mixture of prevention and repression, fragmentation, multilevel character, diversity of actors, diversity of inducements, which shape the "network" of multilateral treaty compliance practice.Chapter III examines the compliance practice of soft law norms in the two representative governance modes the United Nations and G8, G20, especially focusing on the principle of sustainable development in the framework of the United Nations and compliance monitoring mechanisms of the G20summit results. This thesis argues that the soft law as a collection for the norms itself is a legal form during the international legalization process, and the legal effect of the soft law may be impacted by factors such as obligation, precision and delegation. Meanwhile compliance monitoring procedures or mechanisms of different types of soft law continuously develop and improve from the perspective of compliance, which shows two trends with those new development:first, it is similar to multilateral treaty compliance regimes such as reporting system; Second, there are relevant international organizations, institutions and NGOs assessment process or methods.Chapter IV analyses the theories and practice of China’s compliance with international law from the perspective of the subject of international law. Western academia on the issues of China’s compliance with international law commonly drawn to the word, or deed disjuncture, or the dichotomy between the ideals, principles, and orientations expressed in policy pronouncements and the actual conduct of foreign policy. The implication is that China should be judged by the strategies that it pursues rather than those that it espouses. It has been argued that it may reflect utilitarian considerations rather than a fundamental cognitive adjustment culminating in the formation of benign worldview, or that both influences may be at work, which leaded to the realism, utilitarian rationalism and institutionalism dominance on the methodology, and the lack of a wide range of theoretical system with more appropriate analysis tools. China’s compliance with international law reflected its complex interests and multiple identities in the process of peaceful development. How to shape the national image (reputation) that can get the trust of the international community by compliance with international law, for China, it is both an opportunity and a challenge.Finally, conclusion summarizes the main points of the thesis from three parts as follows:the merits and shortcomings of theories of compliance with international law, contemporary compliance theories and practice lead to new development of pacta sunt senvanda and enlightenment from theories of compliance with international law for China’s peaceful development.