Rech, Walter --- "Ideology" [2019] ELECD 211; in d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib (eds), "Concepts for International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 393

Book Title: Concepts for International Law

Editor(s): d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781783474677

Section: Chapter 25

Section Title: Ideology

Author(s): Rech, Walter

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

This chapter provides an analysis of the use of the ideology concept in contemporary international law and suggests ways in which ideology critique might move forward. It argues that the major limitation of some traditional ideology critique has been its investigation of ideology as a totalizing discourse providing stable legitimation for certain economic structures. This view cannot capture how the ideological trends of the postmodern world, including ‘neoliberalism’, operate as ‘on/off’ discourses that are constantly subject to a process of activation, deactivation and merging with competing vocabularies, as visible for example in eclectic ‘populist’ discourses and practices of state capitalism. Current major challenges to international law and international institutions are precisely posed by such eclectic and flexible discourses that need to be examined by an ‘ideology critique in the small’.