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.338 an introduction to international institutional lawTo some extent, this has no doubt been a healthy development: such ideologies as fascism and communism presuppose a commitment to the modernist idea that society is malleable.As Zygmunt Bauman, a leading sociologist, has suggested, there is a direct connection between modernity’s idea that society can be transformed at will, and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.14 Moreover, there is good reason to suppose that world government, once seen as the next phase of international organization, may itself be undesirable: perhaps mankind is better off with a world of smaller political communities instead of a single large polity.15Where organized politics has lost some of its popularity, it should come as no surprise that the two main representatives thereof (states and international organizations) have also fallen from grace, although in the literature a trend towards re-appraising the state can be seen; the state, it would seem, has been rediscovered as a bounded political community, a form of living together of people allowing them to discuss freely the things they have in common and map out their desired future.Indeed, one could well argue that the recent victory tour of human rights and democracy has placed the state in a new, more favourable light, as the ideal guarantor of precisely human rights and democracy.International organizations, however, are left behind, and have started to suffer from a bad reputation, especially compared withthe optimism of yesteryear’s ‘international project’.They are deemed to be wasteful bureaucracies, feeding fat cats, without in any way contributing to the solution of global or regional problems.While it is reasonably obvious that some transboundary problems require international co-operation, it is no longer equally obvious that the formal international organization is the best-qualified vehicle for such co-operation, Indeed, one could argue that recent attempts to create entities which miss some of the characteristics of formal organizations (think of the OSCE, with its ostensible non-legal hallmarks, or the flexibility provided by G7 or G8) are attempts precisely to overcome the perceived obstacle of a formal style of politics.A similar tendency is apparent from the names of some recently created organizations.Thus, co-operation in the bamboo and rattan sector takes place since 1998 through a network – the International Network for 14 See, e.g., Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge, 1991), p.50, arguing that modernity is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for genocide.15 So, e.g., Hannah Arendt, ‘Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?’, reprinted in her Men in Dark Times (San Diego, 1968), 81–94, pp.83–4.re-appraising international organizations339Bamboo and Rattan – and the International Jute Organization will be replaced by a toned-down International Jute Study Group once the Group’s constituent document (tellingly referred to as an agreement establishing terms of reference rather than anything more ambitious) enters into force.Transgovernmentalism, civil society and formalismTaking the place of formal and organized international politics, we have started to idolize two new (relatively new, at any rate) styles of politics.One is the reification of transgovernmentalism16 or, as it has also been called in the slightly more concentrated context of the EC, infranationalism.17 We have come to be content with letting our lives be run by informal networks of decision-makers, and often consider this to be a welcome development: no more bureaucracy, but effective, goal-oriented management of international issues.Thus, judges are said to be engaged in international conversations with one another; civil servants serve their states by informally concluding informal arrangements with their colleagues elsewhere; bankers set standards at their meetings far from the spotlights.18 And to top things off, we often consider that these standards and arrangements are somehow beyond the realm of the law or, at best, make up that mushy institution known as soft law [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]