ABSTRACT
In international law, a common reaction to this nagging sense of uncertainty and disorder is to look to rational choice models and game theory for guidance as to how effective, mutually beneficial rules of behaviour. The utopian ambitions present both in the early Soviet and in the liberal universalist approach to international relations were frustrated. Soviet scholars and politicians increasingly realised since the early 1930s that proletarian world revolution was not as imminent as they had hoped, and that the Soviet Union still had to play for a longer time according to the established rules of international law and diplomacy. A significant number of international lawyers, too, have expressed concerns about a perceived instability of the international legal system, and the topic of an alleged crisis of international law has repeatedly been made subject of conferences and workshops. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
