Describe the Concept of Legalization

Ummul Waraah

Abstract

To demonstrate how law and politics are connected across a broad variety of institutional forms and to frame the analytical and empirical papers that will follow in this book, we establish an empirically grounded definition of international legalization. Three characteristics of institutionalization known as duty, precision, and delegation describe international legality. States are considered to be under obligations when they are held to laws or pledges and are as a result bound by the fundamental principles and practices of international law. Precision refers to how clearly the regulations define the behaviour they demand, permit, or forbid. Delegation gives third parties the power to carry out rules, including their interpretation, application, resolution of conflicts, and (potentially) future rule-making. Each of these dimensions is a question of degree and gradation and is conceptually independent. A tremendous range of international legality results from their varied mixes. We show a continuum from ''hard'' legalization, which is often associated with domestic legal systems, through different types of ''soft'' legalization, to circumstances in which law is essentially absent. The majority of international legalization occurs in the middle, when players mix and make use of various levels of responsibility, accuracy, and delegation to produce deftly nuanced combinations of politics and law.