Description: Evangelos Raftopoulos explores international negotiation as a structured process of relational governance that generates international common interest between and among international participants and in relation to the international public order. He challenges prescriptive models of negotiation - developed in international relations and positivistic approaches to international law, which artificially separate treaties from negotiation in the name of 'objectivity' - and opens a window for looking at international negotiations from a novel, international law perspective. Using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates law, philosophy, politics, and linguistics, he proposes a holistic, theoretical model of multilateral international negotiation that not only offers a 'subjective' view of international law in practice but also demonstrates the importance of understanding the horizontal normativity of international ordering. This work should be read by academics and practitioners of international law and negotiations, officials of international organizations, and anyone else interested in international law and international relations.
Brief description: Evangelos Raftopoulos is Professor of International Law and International Environmental Law at Panteion University of Athens. He is also the Founding Director of MEPIELAN Centre/Panteion University of Athens, an officially accredited UNEP/MAP Partner and a Member of the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development. Educated at the University of Cambridge (Ph.D. (Cantab), LL.M. (Cantab), and Athens (LL.B.), he has been recently a Visiting Scholar at Downing College, University of Cambridge. He has participated in more than seventy international environmental conferences and meetings and has authored eleven books, numerous articles, and international reports.
Review Quotes: 'The South China Sea arbitration ... is so far the first attempt by a claimant State in the South China Sea to resort the dispute to a third party forum ... (and) it does not make a desired contribution to resolving the real dispute ... Nevertheless, it does motivate China and ASEAN to speed up the negotiation on the consultation of the Code of Conduct. Raftopoulos' book, viewing international negotiation as a process of relational governance based on the analytical framework of international common interest, will shed light on countries who are in favor of preference for negotiation in managing international disputes. The book generates much discussion on the matrix of the international negotiation process through both an intellectual and pragmatic lens, and should be read by academics and practitioners of international law and negotiations, officials of international organizations, and anyone interested in the interdisciplinary study of international law and international relations.' Dr Nong Hong, Ocean Yearbook