ABSTRACT
Premised on the conceptualization of legal compliance as a discursively constructed phenomenon, and oriented toward the inquiry about the effects of international law on the use of force, this chapter develops a new theory of compliance based on the two institutional practices described in the previous chapter: namely, the legalized legitimation of the use of force at the level of inter-state interactions, and the lawyerized decision-making process in the war-making apparatus of the state. The first section reviews the existing scholarship on international law compliance, organizing our theoretical knowledge of this phenomenon in terms of three driving logics of compliance: consequentialism, appropriateness, and organizational process. The second section develops a new practice-based theory of compliance premised on the unprecedented authoritative power acquired by the international legal discourse in diplomacy and in the policymaking process within the state. Finally, the chapter concludes by underscoring the mutual reinforcement of the two engines of compliance brought to center stage by this new theoretical narrative.
