2012/09/01 by William Phelan · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #European Union Policy and Governance #World Trade Organization Law #International Arbitration and Investment Law
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1468-2486.2012.01136.x
openalex publication_date 2012/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
It is widely agreed that the EU is a sui generis international organization, but current scholarship rarely specifies why. This paper identifies the EU as a “self-contained regime”, a treaty institution that imposes costly requirements on its member states but rejects the use of inter-state countermeasure and reciprocity mechanisms. As a self-contained regime, the EU is a puzzle because international relations theory emphasizes the importance of inter-state countermeasures as incentives for states to fulfill costly obligations, as is illustrated by scholarly debates on the politics of both trade and human rights regimes.