ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the political sociology of international law helps to problematize these boundaries and divides. It presents an alternative pathway to interdisciplinary dialogue about international law, one that takes seriously both its workings as an autonomous practice and the specific politics of making sense of the world through legal categories. The chapter provides a synopsis of the relationship between law and politics as it was developed in international legal scholarship. While doctrinal analysis of law as a body of rules and the external analysis of law as a behavioural effect share the positivist assumption of rules as carrying their own meaning, a political sociology of law as an argumentative practice analyzes law’s meaning in use. The calls for interdisciplinarity as defined by the mainstream International Relations, broadly coincide with the end of the Cold War, which allegedly enabled a move beyond power and security towards soft politics and normative power.
