World Trade Law After Neoliberalism: Re-Imagining the Global Economic Order

The rise of economic liberalism in the latter stages of the 20th century coincided with a fundamental transformation of international economic governance, especially through the law of the World Trade Organization. In this book, Andrew Lang provides a new account of this transformation, and considers its enduring implications for international law. Against the commonly-held idea that ’neoliberal’ policy prescriptions were encoded into WTO law, Lang argues that the last decades of the 20th century saw a reinvention of the international trade regime, and a reconstitution of its internal structures of knowledge.

In addition, the book explores the way that resistance to economic liberalism was expressed and articulated over the same period in other areas of international law, most prominently international human rights law. It considers the promise and limitations of this form of ’inter-regime’ contestation, arguing that measures to ensure greater collaboration and cooperation between regimes may fail in their objectives if they are not accompanied by a simultaneous destabilization of each regime’s structures of knowledge and characteristic features. With that in mind, the book contributes to a full and productive contestation of the nature and purpose of global economic governance.

Andrew Lang is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the London School of Economics, teaching public international law, with a specialty in international economic law. He is a co-founder, with Colin Picker, of the Society of International Economic Law. He sits on the Editorial Boards of the Modern Law Review, the Journal of International Economic Law and the Law and Development Review, and is a Book Review Editor for the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. He has taught on the World Trade Institute’s Masters of International Law and Economics (MILE) program, the University of Barcelona’s IELPO course, as well as the IIEM Academy of International Trade Law in Macau. Andrew has a combined BA/ LLB degree from the University of Sydney, receiving the University Medal in both degrees. His PhD is from the University of Cambridge, graduating in May 2005. From 2004-2006, he was the Gott Research Fellow in Law at Trinity Hall, at the University of Cambridge.