ABSTRACT
States and inter-governmental organizations are major actors in international affairs. This is trite. The decisions that determine how the global order is shaped largely depend on what states and international organizations (IOs) do. But increasingly there is a strong proclivity at the global, transnational and regional levels to have new platforms or loci for decision-making and shaping. These new sites of collective policy shaping are gaining importance as traditional actors such as states, IOs and even multinational companies seek to pool their capacities in policy networks that now influence how people live. The networks matter in the manner in which international relations (IR) are now shaped (Earnest, 2009, p. 4). Networks are also important in molding domestic politics (True & Mintrom, 2001, p. 28) and in the making of both
municipal and international norms (Ost & Van de Kerchove, 2002). The role that such networks play specifically in the making of international law in what Pauwelyn, Wessel and Wouters have termed informal international lawmaking is a fast-growing area (Pauwelyn, Wessel, & Wouters, 2011, 2012). The increasing importance of networks has clearly been accompanied by a proliferation in the poles of normative prescribers. Drawing from Foucault, Rajagopal writes that the ‘most effective power has shifted to apparatuses of government that are both above and below the state as well as to private actors, both domestic and transnational’ (Rajagopal, 2003, p. 14).
