The Thirteenth Chime: Experimentalism and the Global Economy
More than a decade ago, international lawyers were criticised as 'handmaidens' of globalisation, both deeply implicated in the changes associated with globalisation and at the same time relatively inattentive to them.1 It was a criticism that hit home. In the intervening years, this neglect has become a preoccupation, as we international lawyers continue our iterative reflections on the problem of our own role in establishing contemporary forms of globalisation. Roberto Manga beira Unger, in his new book FreeTrade Reimagined, may help us to write a different chapter in the story of our relationship with globalisation, as he invites us to join his critical project of remaking globalisation through law. It is a book with grand ambition, which introduces an attractive new vision of a fundamentally reimagined global economic order. Yet, for all its ambition, the book is narrowly focussed on questions related to the economics of free trade. For Unger (as for so many others) 'the global trading regime is the heart of the emer ging form of globalization (167). It follows that if we are to reimagine globalisa tion, we must begin by reimagining the organisation of the world trading system. And since the landscape of normative discourse about trade is dominated by tech nical economic arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of 'free trade', the book spends as much time discussing the detail of the doctrine of comparative advantage, and of orthodox economic teachings about free trade, as it does in set ting out its grand vision for a trading order remade along experimentalist lines. In this essay, I do not intend to focus on Unger's specific criticisms of trade theory, but rather concentrate on those aspects (and there are many) which are of broader appeal to lawyers interested in questions around international economic govern ance. In the first and second sections, I set out Unger's experimentalist vision, then offer my own reflections on it. While aspects of this vision remain underdeve loped, and certain key questions remain overlooked, I find in it the seeds of an interesting new approach, in a field of enquiry in which new thinking of this kind remains rare. In the third section, I change tack, and reflect on the approaches that Unger adopts as a lawyer engaging with economic theory. It is a position in which lawyers interested in the international economy often find themselves ?