STATES, MARKETS, AND GATEKEEPERS: PUBLIC-PRIVATE REGULATORY REGIMES IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

The international legal sphere, as traditionally conceived, represents a "horizontal" system populated by nominally equal sovereign States.1 The decentralized nature of this domain renders the line between international law, on the one hand, and international relations, on the other, relatively blurry, as they both, in effect, represent forms of coordination among sovereign entities enjoying equivalent status as international actors - an ontological reality reflected in the word "inter-national" itself, which encodes a preoccupation with relationships among territorially and legally discrete nation-states.2 Following the Peace of Westphalia, the monopoly on international legal personality enjoyed by States remained relatively secure for at least three centuries.3 This is reflected in the fundamental sources of international law, including customary law derived principally from practices of States accepted as binding, and treaties, which can be crudely characterized as contractual relationships among States (if often tackling subject matter addressed through statutes at the domestic level).4 More tangibly, however, it is reflected in the fact that "the principle of the sovereign equality of [States]" is explicitly incorporated as the bedrock norm of the United Nations.5 At the international level, we find "not world government" but rather - as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye aptly phrase it discrete "islands of governance,"6 wherever States can reach agreement, amidst a larger sea of cross-border activity.