The Protection of Community Interests in International Law and Economics

This chapter translates the concept of community interest protection, as used in the international law literature, into economic terms. It defines the legal concept of community interests in international law broadly speaking as other-regarding interests as opposed to national self-interests. This chapter then provides an overview of the economic concepts of private goods, public goods, and mixed goods at the international level, as well as their underlying cooperation problems. It explains notably the collective action problems underlying the provision of global public goods (GPGs) and the protection of common pool resources (CPRs), both characterised by the non-excludability of benefits vis-à-vis third parties. Subsequently, this chapter describes how self-interested states cooperate with recourse to international law to address different types of global challenges. It examines community interest norms from the perspective of economic goods theory, including their degree of congruence across subject areas of international law. Building on these insights regarding first-order cooperation problems, the chapter presents the different compliance mechanisms in the international legal order which rely on self-enforcement by states. These second-order cooperation problems have implications for the effective protection of community interests, when enforcement bears itself public good characteristics as states have incentives to free-ride.