Papers by Alejandro Rodiles
London Review of International Law, Oct 28, 2022
We are currently witnessing the evolution of two gigantic development programmes: the United Nati... more We are currently witnessing the evolution of two gigantic development programmes: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Perceived and real differences notwithstanding, both place infrastructures at the heart of global development. The present article analyses the relations between this new developmental thinking and law. The fluid rearrangement of public and private, formal and informal legal frameworks spurred by BRI indicate the emergence of a transnational legal infrastructure both tied to and facilitated by a material pragmatism at odds with China’s rhetorical embracement of international law as we know it. The implementation infrastructure of SDGs, for its part, reveals a resilience-driven style of governance difficult to reconcile with the futurity attaching to the idea of law. While these findings would suggest a retreat from international law, the present article argues that many types of global law are emerging and resurfacing from infrastructural developmentalism.
Anuario Mexicano de Derecho Internacional
AJIL Unbound
In “Making Sense of Security,” J. Benton Heath convincingly argues that the concept of security s... more In “Making Sense of Security,” J. Benton Heath convincingly argues that the concept of security should be understood as a struggle for epistemic authority. Heath develops a comprehensive typology that helps to understand the processes through which people make sense of the term security, while it also helps identifying the legal and political practices involved. However, as he rightly observes, these approaches to security are “not stable equilibria but rather more like quantum states, in which each type contains the potential for the others.”1 Global counterterrorism law powerfully illustrates this evolution. In particular, the growing field of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) reveals a flow of security conceptions, including realist, widened, and discursive security. Applying Heath's typology to this field shows that evolving rationales have set in motion normative practices, which are difficult to trace from within a traditional international security law f...
The Oxford Handbook of the International Law of Global Security
This chapter examines the role of the Global South in international security. In a constantly cha... more This chapter examines the role of the Global South in international security. In a constantly changing global political environment, certain States from the South occupy a pivotal position when it comes to addressing specific security crises, be it due to their regional leadership or because they are otherwise regarded as indispensable brokers in highly complex political and cultural constellations. In terms of insecurity, the South is no longer primarily regarded as a bloody theatre of major power confrontation, but as a source of insecurity in and of itself. The chapter then considers some of the evolving contours of the law and governance of global security. There is a growing reliance on ad hoc arrangements that contribute to the decentralization and deformalization of the classical international security architecture centred on treaties and international institutions. Also, the merger of security and development is undergoing profound transformations, as shown by the ongoing Un...
Today, we are witnessing the making, operation, and evolution of two gigantic development program... more Today, we are witnessing the making, operation, and evolution of two gigantic development programs at the global level: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the General Assembly in 2015, and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013. Perceived and real ideological differences notwithstanding, BRI and SDGs place infrastructures at the very heart of global development, strongly favoring pragmatism and immediate responsiveness. This paper analyzes the relations of this new developmental paradigm with law. By resorting to the Infrastructures as Regulation project (InfraReg), it focuses on the regulatability and regulatory effects of physical, informational, and digital infrastructures underlying both initiatives. The fluid re-arrangement of public and private, formal and informal legal frameworks regulating BRI indicate the emergence of a transnational legal infrastructure tied to and facilitated by material pragm...
Non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council experience clear and well-known limi... more Non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council experience clear and well-known limits. Yet, there are certain tools at their disposal which, beyond lucky political constellations, allow them to exercise a more systemic influence on the Council’s work and outcomes. These tools are of a juridical nature, often established and developed through the organ’s practice, but their efficient use depends primarily on diplomatic expertise and imagination channeled through informal venues. The present article shows how said tools have been used in the case of the promotion of the ‘international rule of law’. However contested the concept and restricted its practical consequences on the organ’s functions, the evolution of its promotion within the Security Council is both a demonstration of and a further vehicle for non-permanent members’ influence on this body. That this in turn serves to legitimate the Council under its current configuration can be seen critically. However, it seems important to underline that the UN Security Council’s efficiency depends ever more on the legitimacy that non-permanent members can best imprint on it. In a non-polar world, this tendency can be expected to increase.
Research Handbook on UN Sanctions and International Law
Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, 2019
It is usually assumed that populism is hostile towards international law. However, this assumptio... more It is usually assumed that populism is hostile towards international law. However, this assumption is based on a particular version of populism (far-right) and of international law itself (that associated with the liberal international order). A closer look at the many manifestations of populism, actually reveals that different approaches to international law have been present across time and space. Taking Latin America as the case-study, this chapter shows that governments which have been labelled ‘populist’ have proactively advocated certain conceptions of international law. Conscious of their status in the semi-periphery, Peronismo in Argentina promoted a Cold War doctrine of equidistance to the major powers based on efforts of regional legal integration, while the government of Echeverria in Mexico became the major force behind the New International Economic Order (NIEO). Both represent early Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). Based on Andean indigenous ontolog...
Megaregulation Contested
This chapter presents an analytical pathological appraisal of elite thinking and mobilization in ... more This chapter presents an analytical pathological appraisal of elite thinking and mobilization in Mexico after the Trump administration withdrew from TPP and forced Mexico to engage in NAFTA renegotiations. It examines the strategies developed by political and economic elites in response to the threat of trade war coming from Mexico’s most important trade partner. This analysis shows that, although Mexican elites developed sophisticated heuristics in order to confront the immediate challenge from the government in Washington DC, they did not engage in what should be a very important debate about Mexico’s role in the reconfigurations of global trade and order. This is a missed opportunity for Mexico which could affect its role in the ongoing reconfigurations of global trade and law, and thus its future stature in world politics.
Coalitions of the Willing and International Law
This contribution gives a brief account of the politico-juridical context, as well as of the prep... more This contribution gives a brief account of the politico-juridical context, as well as of the preparations and negotiations that preceded and resulted in the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1904 (2009) and the establishment of the Ombudsperson of the Al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions regime. While acknowledging that still much is needed in order to fully respect due process rights of listed individuals and entities, it is argued that this institutional change is a significant achievement in the frame of the emerging global rule of law.
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law
In Mexico, there is no legal field known as “foreign relations law.” The legal rules and principl... more In Mexico, there is no legal field known as “foreign relations law.” The legal rules and principles that regulate how the country relates to the outside world have been studied as a subfield of international law, known as “the relationship between the international and national legal orders.” This subfield has produced one stream of writings dealing with the prerogatives of the executive in the conduct of foreign policy, and a different one, on treaty-making and the role of treaties within the internal norm hierarchy. Although each approach portrays important aspects of the relationship between national law and international law, this chapter argues that both fail to comprehend that the legal principles and rules on foreign affairs operate at the interstices of these legal orders. In surveying the literature on executive power in external affairs as well as the scholarship on domestic treaty law, the chapter shows that the former has emerged within diplomatic elites, which are conce...
Uploads
Papers by Alejandro Rodiles