ABSTRACT
Fritz Kratochwil’s essay treats the rise of ‘free-standing’ international regimes and “governmental networks that emerge from the disaggregation of the state” as separate developments in order to pose a large question. If law functions simply as a restraint, then the question of international law’s status as law is unavoidable, as Fritz remarks, and its relevance to international relations doubtful. When Fritz talks about “the process of boundary drawing,” he is linking process to system settings. Vertical links for ascending information and descending orders constitute levels only insofar as officers of the same rank in the chain of command develop lateral links. For Fritz, ever-denser networks dissolve levels, allowing to see them as emerging hierarchies – but only if people free hierarchy from its “spatial representation.”
