Global economic governance and the challenge facing traditional international law in the 21st century

The present movement toward globalisation has posed a tremendous challenge to traditional international law and, in fact, its various branches including international economic law. The challenge is both horizontal and vertical. It is horizontal in the sense that various new actors such as multinationals, civil society and other non-state actors are increasingly playing an important role in international life and society which is not recognized in traditional international law. (Jessica T Matthews describes a shift away from the state – up down and sideways – to supra-state, sub-state, and, above all, non-state actors in her article “Power shift”, Foreign Affairs, January 1997). From the spatial point of view, the territory of international law is increasingly broadening in light of recent developments in the wake of globalisation. The new norms that are rules in the field of international law in various new contexts are also supposed to be evolving vertically to regulate effectively the new phenomenon of globalisation in its various spheres. So from the contextual point of view traditional international law is also evolving vertically.