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Research Handbook on Soft Law
This pioneering Research Handbook provides an in-depth scholarly overview of the field of soft law, exploring the scope of current thinking in the field as well as proposing future pathways for soft law research. Through theoretical and empirical analyses by established voices in the field, the Research Handbook offers important insights and much-needed clarity into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law.
This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contributors
More Information
This pioneering Research Handbook provides a comprehensive and in-depth scholarly overview of the field of soft law, exploring the scope of current thinking in the field as well as proposing future pathways for soft law research.
Organized into four broad themes, the Research Handbook offers important and unique insights into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law. The first section delves into the conceptual history and development of soft law. Second, the Handbook explores the disciplinary understandings of soft law, examining how scholars from different fields investigate the topic. The third theme focuses on the public and private actors and institutions involved in soft law-making, providing a detailed analysis of the complex relationships that shape soft law. Finally, the fourth theme explores the role of soft law in addressing major global societal challenges, including among others climate change, gender inequality, and the regulation of artificial intelligence.
This Research Handbook will be a key resource for students and scholars in constitutional and administrative law, public international law, regulation and governance, public administration and policy, and law and politics. Practitioners and policymakers seeking to better understand the role of soft law in domestic and international law, policy and governance will also find this book beneficial.
Organized into four broad themes, the Research Handbook offers important and unique insights into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law. The first section delves into the conceptual history and development of soft law. Second, the Handbook explores the disciplinary understandings of soft law, examining how scholars from different fields investigate the topic. The third theme focuses on the public and private actors and institutions involved in soft law-making, providing a detailed analysis of the complex relationships that shape soft law. Finally, the fourth theme explores the role of soft law in addressing major global societal challenges, including among others climate change, gender inequality, and the regulation of artificial intelligence.
This Research Handbook will be a key resource for students and scholars in constitutional and administrative law, public international law, regulation and governance, public administration and policy, and law and politics. Practitioners and policymakers seeking to better understand the role of soft law in domestic and international law, policy and governance will also find this book beneficial.
Critical Acclaim
‘Soft law is at once a welcome addition to the instruments for governing and a challenge to traditional ideas of law and governance. This Research Handbook provides a thorough and thoughtful examination of the nature of soft law and its contributions to governing at the national and transnational levels. It is essential reading for scholars of law, political science, economics and governance.’
– B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US
‘While soft law is increasingly central, its fuzziness – sitting between law and politics; the local and the global; the public and the private – makes it difficult to grasp for academics and practitioners alike. Into this darkness, this Research Handbook shines bright light, examining both soft law’s history and its development across policy fields. For its intellectual depth and empirical rigour, it deserves to be widely read.’
– Mark Dawson, Hertie School, Germany
‘This Elgar Research Handbook on Soft Law provides critically important, grounded cases studies of soft law in action across key policy fields, combined with conceptual and normative analyses for governance going forward, with significant implications for the major challenges that our societies face, from climate change, AI, and financial crises, to social inclusion and the rule of law.’
– Gregory Shaffer, University of California, US
– B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US
‘While soft law is increasingly central, its fuzziness – sitting between law and politics; the local and the global; the public and the private – makes it difficult to grasp for academics and practitioners alike. Into this darkness, this Research Handbook shines bright light, examining both soft law’s history and its development across policy fields. For its intellectual depth and empirical rigour, it deserves to be widely read.’
– Mark Dawson, Hertie School, Germany
‘This Elgar Research Handbook on Soft Law provides critically important, grounded cases studies of soft law in action across key policy fields, combined with conceptual and normative analyses for governance going forward, with significant implications for the major challenges that our societies face, from climate change, AI, and financial crises, to social inclusion and the rule of law.’
– Gregory Shaffer, University of California, US
Contributors
Contributors include: Anne Ausfelde, Birte Böök, Bruno de Witte, Adam Eick, Mariolina Eliantonio, Blake Emerson, Michael Faure, Mikkel Flyverbom, Joelle Grogan, Kristina Tamm Hallström, Miriam Hartlapp, Boris Holzer, Timothy Jacob-Owens, Jacint Jordana, Nils Jansen, Jan Klabbers, Emilia Korkea-aho, Kati Kulovesi, Hans-W. Micklitz, Joan Solanes Mullor, Ulrika Mörth, Ingrid Gustafsson Nordin, Niels Philipsen, Claudio M. Radaelli,Sofia Ranchordás, María Eugenia Recio, Frederik Schade, Linda Senden, Jo Shaw, Francis Snyder, Oana Stefan, Sabina Stiller, Gaia Taffoni, Rafael Tamayo-Álvarez, Fabien Terpan, Alexander H. Türk, Rene Urueña, Clara van Dam, Minna van Gerven, Steven Vaughan, Astrid Voorwinden, Filippo M. Zerilli
