The process of identifying and interpreting norms of customary international law, while appearing to be primarily based on an inductive analysis of state practice and opinio juris, is sometimes a deductive exercise based on logic and reason. Logic permeates every decision in international law. Logic manifests itself inherently throughout the process and can be identified in all steps of reasoning in identifying, interpreting and applying customary international law. Logic, however, can constitute the application of either an inductive or deductive inference. This chapter focuses on situations in which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) applied a deductive approach, identifying or interpreting norms of customary international law without seeming to consult state practice and opinio juris. Specifically, it considers whether norms that can be reasonably inferred or deduced from existing rules, or that are simply logical for the operation of the international legal system, can be identified as norms of customary international law under a complementary, supplementary or distinctive interpretive approach.

This chapter addresses the chronological paradox of customary international law (CIL). The paradox is that for a new customary rule to be created states must believe that the law already obligates the behaviour specified in that rule (opinio juris). However, the behaviour in question can only be legally required once that rule has been created. As a result, creating a new customary rule would be impossible, or at the very least an incoherent process. This chapter challenges this conclusion. In addressing the chronological paradox, it provides a coherent interpretation of the creation of new customary rules. It argues that the sense of legal obligation (opinio juris) emerges from the general principle of good faith. Good faith leads to legal obligations, which compel a subgroup of states to engage in specific behaviour. Then, as a result of this subgroup’s repeated behaviour, a new customary rule emerges, obligating the entire community of states to act accordingly. To explain the shift from good faith to legal obligations and from legal obligations to customary rules, the chapter draws on interpretivism, social ontology and contemporary research on constitutive rules.

This chapter provides an overview of the aims and research questions guiding this book. It introduces key terms and concepts and outlines the main contributions of the book. The chapter explains why the complex relations between state and non-state actors are crucial to understanding the implementation of the Paris Agreement. It provides a background to understanding the role of collaborative climate governance in the post-Paris governance landscape by highlighting the international context and describing Sweden’s climate policy framework. Finally, it provides a brief overview of each chapter in the book.

When faced with the inevitable task of interpreting customary international law (CIL), what should a court do and what should it consider? Should it engage in an ‘inductive’ process of sifting through available evidence of state practice and opinio juris or a deductive process designed to reason logically from principles embedded in the rule? Should the court invoke something like the rules of treaty interpretation with their focus on good faith, ordinary meaning, context, and object and purpose? International law doctrine falls short here. Figuring out how to interpret and apply custom requires a theory of custom, a focus on the normative stories we tell. This reveals that there is not just one story explaining why custom should be a source of law, but multiple stories. What we call ‘custom’ may represent or draw from at least three different sources of law: Negotiated Law, Legislated Law and Adjudicated Law. This chapter aims to show that the non-treaty rules derived from each draw on different sources of legitimacy, operate according to different logics, dictate different methods of interpretation, and favour different methods for resolving disputes.

The risk of possibly conflicting norms of customary international law (CIL) has received increased attention in recent international legal scholarship and practice. In the absence of commonly accepted or authoritative rules of conflict that may mitigate the ramifications which stem from a possible clash of opposing obligations under CIL, legal scholars and practitioners alike almost instinctively turn towards competent (judicial) authorities, thereby seeking advice on how to strike a balance between conflicting norms in conformity with applicable legal frameworks and regimes. Thus far, international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, have regularly refrained from outlining, conceiving and imposing coherent analytical and prescriptive means of establishing an equilibrium between (partially) opposing norms of CIL in situ. This chapter argues that international adjudicative bodies could contemplate resorting to the German constitutional law principle of practical concordance (praktische Konkordanz) and thereby draw on a legal methodology that has become well established and is regularly applied by the German Constitutional Court when ruling on fundamental rights.

This chapter explores net-zero emission targets in Swedish municipalities. Based on a detailed examination of over 300 local climate and environment plans, the chapter both maps and evaluates the quantity and quality of net-zero emissions targets in Swedish municipalities, as well as how they relate to the national climate mitigation goals. It identifies 39 municipalities with net-zero emission targets. The targets range from highly specific with intermediary goals and plans for how to deal with residual emissions, to lofty, one-sentence visions without any further specifications. The findings are subsequently discussed whether aspirational goals – such as net-zero emission targets – could have an impact on the climate policy of a municipality or whether more specific goals are more effective. The chapter concludes that net-zero emission targets are still in their infancy in Swedish municipalities with large heterogeneity and gaps in how the goals are defined, what they include in terms of GHGs and sectors, and whether they also include measures for dealing with residual emissions.

Customary international law (CIL) is particularly vulnerable to the accusation that it is no more than ‘mere assertion’, a creation of the courts, if not downright fantasy. Yet it is in CIL that one finds the strongest claim to objectivity in international law. It is expressed in the doctrine that one of the elements of CIL is state practice, which represents the ‘objective’ element of CIL. It is thought to supplement the ‘subjective’ or ‘psychological’ element of CIL: opinio juris. This chapter argues that the notion of state practice as a set of ‘material facts’ that should be ‘identified’ and from which customary norms can be ‘induced’ is grounded in obsolete epistemology. The identification of state practice is more adequately described as a selection of what deserves to be counted as state practice. It is argued that the starting point for this selective process is opinio juris. Opinio juris does not come after the fact, as a subjective feeling of obligation that is superadded to a set of otherwise objective facts. Opinio juris is the indispensable conceptual framework without which habits and usages cannot even be ‘seen’ as state practice.

Interpretation is ubiquitous in everyday life. We constantly interpret a variety of objects. Interpretation is central to the practice of international law, too. Arguing about international law’s content is the everyday business of international lawyers, and this often includes arguing about the existence and content of norms of customary international law (CIL). Although a number of scholars recognise that CIL can be interpreted, disagreements remain as to the precise methods and extent of CIL interpretation. Such disagreements are born of a common concern to secure competently made, coherent and accurate interpretations of CIL, given the latter’s non-textual nature. This chapter aims to explore in a preliminary manner two related questions regarding CIL interpretation: (1) Is it necessary, or even possible, to strive towards coherence in the interpretation of CIL? (2) Are there any possible indicators of (in-)coherence in that respect? Providing answers to these questions depends on how one understands coherence in the first place, including its relation to legal reasoning. A substantial part of the chapter will therefore deal with that as well.

Introduction

How is feminism conducted in everyday foreign policy and what feminist routines do foreign policy actors practice? We know that men have long been doing foreign policy in homosocial environments ranging from golf courses, saunas and billiard rooms to hotel lobbies, smoking corners, banquets and bars (Nair, 2020). Since women (less so non-binary people) entered foreign policy institutions in the 20th century, it becomes important to understand how their contribution to diplomacy has changed the everyday practice of foreign policy (Aggestam and Towns, 2018). Practice is defined as the routine and innovative everyday behaviours that enable both continuity and change.

In recent work on International Practice Theory (IPT), we learn, for example, that because of the changes in women's status in foreign policy institutions, the understanding of a diplomatic spouse has started to transform (Standfield, 2022). For instance, the male-homosocial practice of playing golf has lost momentum in certain parts of the world because women as foreign policy actors are not interested in reproducing the traditional practices of their male counterparts (Nair, 2020). Given these changes, it is worth asking whether feminist practices of foreign policy are emerging and, if so, what they entail?

Drawing on International Relations (IR) feminist scholarship, this chapter shows how feminist practices of foreign policy involve an inclusive dialogue based on partner-oriented listening and respect for difference (Park-Kang, 2011; Robinson, 2011), self-reflective listening and attentiveness to positionality (Ackerly and True, 2008; Harcourt et al, 2015), and collaborative engagement in ‘third spaces’ (Nnaemeka, 2004; Kamaara et al, 2012). I argue that traditional practices of foreign policy can enable and constrain feminist practices of inclusive dialogue aimed at achieving empathetic cooperation in global politics (Sylvester, 1994). I thus look at how traditional foreign policy and new feminist practices coexist in everyday encounters of foreign policy actors and how these practices influence each other.

The chapter aims to contribute to IPT scholarship that has not comprehensively considered the role of gender and feminisms in foreign policy practice (Pouliot, 2008; Bueger and Gadinger, 2015; Bremberg, 2016). This neglect has led IPT to focus more on conflict than cooperation ignoring the role of social structures, such as gender, sex, class, race and others in shaping international interactions (Nair, 2020).

Introduction

Transnational feminist networks (TFNs) have been crucial to formulating and diffusing gender equality norms (True and Mintrom, 2001). They have advanced legislation and policies to uphold women's rights (Weldon and Htun, 2012), reinforced shared ideals of gender equality (Moghadam, 2005) and affirmed identity-solidarity among women globally (Alvarez, 2000). Feminist networks organize locally, nationally and transnationally and coalesce around various issues, from economic policy to environmental justice. More generally, feminist networks engage in collective action to contest patriarchal social, economic and political power structures and norms (Tarrow, 2011; True, 2024).

Feminist networks are manifestations of social networks that describe social and political problems using a gender and power-critical perspective (Tarrow, 2011; Krinsky and Crossley, 2014). Social networks ‘coordinate their efforts, pool their resources and act collectively’ (Krinsky and Crossley, 2014: 2). These networks use different strategies, such as framing, to create shared meanings and make sense of their reality (Benford and Snow, 2000). By framing collective understandings of injustices and inequalities, feminist networks lay the groundwork for initiatives (see Tarrow, 2011; Caiani, 2023). Hence, feminist networks extend their engagement beyond the descriptive realm to one that encompasses actionable demands and solutions.

Transnational networks connect organizations and ties across borders ‘through common ways of seeing the world … and contentious relationships with their targets’ (Tarrow, 2011: 241). Moghadam (2005: 4) defines TFNs as structures that ‘unite women from three or more different countries around a common agenda’. TFNs played a particularly relevant role in international politics during the 1980s and 1990s, when they lobbied states to guarantee and expand women's human rights and achieved concrete policy outcomes (Moghadam, 2005). The recent proliferation of feminist foreign policies has put feminist-informed foreign policy and governance at the forefront of international politics once again. With the diffusion of feminist foreign policy, what is the role of TFNs in advancing feminist-informed foreign policy and governance? This chapter seeks to answer this question.

One of the main criticisms of TFNs is that the shift in focus from the local to the transnational oversimplifies local complexities. For instance, Markland (2020: 20) argues that ‘combining global, regional, national and sub-national spaces can undermine and/ or mask existing social forms whose function cannot be reduced to a greater whole’. Transnational activism is critiqued for diminishing sense of place and flattening differences based on national origins and identities (Conway, 2017).

Introduction

Any discussion of ‘gender perspectives on X’ or ‘feminist approaches to Y’ must acknowledge and respond to the extreme precarity of the historical moment in which we live; to fail to do so is suicidal, and ecocidal. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022), we have only until 2025 to end the rise of greenhouse gas emissions, and only until 2030 to halve them, if we are to have a chance of avoiding the most catastrophic effects of climate disruption. Even in 2023, we’ve already seen climate breakdown feedback loops intensifying faster than climate scientists had modelled or predicted (for example, the collapse of Atlantic currents, see Readfearn, 2023; Spratt, 2023; Zhong, 2023). At the same time, ecosystem decline proceeds at a staggering pace – a million species are now threatened with extinction, due not only to the climate crisis, but to the ways humans have also destroyed natural habitats, polluted air, land and water, and over-exploited nature's animal and plant life. Sir Robert Watson, Chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), warns that ‘[t] he health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide’ (IPBES, 2019).

For this careening towards catastrophe to continue unabated, all that needs to happen is for all of us – including feminists – to just go on doing what we have done before, doing the work we have always done, in the ways that we have always done it. It is wildly irresponsible to let that happen.

Foreign policy, as it is conceptualized and practised, is a prime example of the ‘doing-things-as-we-have-always-done-them’ that has now become disastrously inadequate to and inappropriate for our tenuous historical present and our even more tenuous future. It is a policy realm whose centre, around which all else spins, is national self-interest. Even though states’ foreign policies may commit to a vision of a better, fairer, more peaceful world, their principal aim is always to advance their national security and prosperity through military strength and economic growth.

Introduction

In the past decade, feminist and pro-gender foreign policies have emerged across a range of countries as an ethical alternative to traditional foreign policy practices driven mainly by security and national interests. Rather than reproducing narrow definitions of these security interests, which tend to sediment prevalent global inequalities, feminist-informed foreign policies seek to further equality, justice and collective security through a transformation of the global gender order (Aggestam and True, 2020). Despite the growth of war and conflict in global politics, scholarship on gender and feminist approaches to foreign policy has rarely addressed the increasing militarism and militarization of state foreign policies. To address this gap, we ask where and how defence is addressed in feminist-informed foreign policies. The chapter calls for greater attentiveness to feminist scholarship on war as experience, just war theory, pacifism and self-defence to develop a more robust ethical content of pro-gender and feminist foreign policies. We argue that the lack of examination of military and defence policy in existing pro-gender and feminist foreign policies is a silence echoed in feminist scholarship.

We posit that defence is a core part of most states’ foreign policies,1 including those states which have adopted pro-gender and feminist approaches to foreign policy. Defence refers to activities focused on the protection of the state from external attack, whereby a range of institutional and material capabilities (the armed forces and the military) are employed to defend the nation against war. Importantly, defence

is distinct from security, which can be defined more broadly and holistically to focus beyond (just) the state, to include the individual and thus can include a range of issues, such as the environment. It is therefore possible to see why defence with its support for realpolitik can come into tension with feminism, which seeks to challenge such state-centred approaches. (Wright, 2024 )

This chapter analyses the relationship between feminist and pro-gender foreign policy on the one hand, and military and defence on the other by engaging with feminist ideas on just war, war as experience, pacifism and self-defence (Ruddick, 1995; Hutchings, 2019). We argue that for foreign policy to be transformative, it must also encompass the broad compass of a state's foreign policy concerns, including defence.

Introduction

The rise of digital disinformation as a threat to liberal democracies confronts the role of gender relations in foreign policy in new ways. The acceptance of ‘gendered disinformation’ as a foreign policy issue signals a gender-informed understanding of digital disinformation as a security concern. Digital disinformation campaigns that emanate from hostile actors around the world deliberately fuel misogyny, stereotypes and biases to manipulate public opinion and voting behaviours. These campaigns thereby intersect with and overlap public debate. Gendered disinformation is often successful because it resonates with the domestic contestation of gender norms. The construction of gendered disinformation as a security concern thereby implicates the sensitive relationship between disinformation and public opinion. The rise of gendered disinformation in the realm of foreign policy therefore challenges the status of gender norms in the liberal order by exposing the vulnerabilities of domestic polarization over gender equality. This chapter aims to introduce gendered disinformation as a foreign policy issue, and to discuss how studying this phenomenon may draw from previous scholarship on gender and feminism in foreign policy.

Digital disinformation, the diffusion of false information on digital platforms with the intent to deceive, strategically targets the foundations of democratic discourse and public deliberation by exploiting societal division around contested norms. It is a valued foreign policy instrument because it allows actors to exploit socio-political cleavages to spread confusion, amplify conflicts and further divide societies. Gender identities and norms have proven particularly susceptible to this form of manipulation (Bradshaw and Henle, 2021). Disinformation narratives gain traction in online networks when they resonate among audiences by connecting with local narratives, myths or identities (Schmitt, 2018). Digital disinformation thereby insects with and amplifies the known effects of online gender-based violence, such as the silencing and censoring of voices (Suzor et al, 2019). Disinformation campaigns, often favoured by autocratic regimes or groups and their allies, thus further weaponize sexist narratives within domestic debates as part of a foreign policy strategy (Di Meco and Brechenmacher, 2020). Analyses of foreign interference in democratic elections have demonstrated how prominent female candidates like nominee Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election of 2016, are disproportionally targeted through disinformation campaigns that exploit stereotypical and biased attitudes in voters (Jensen, 2018; Nee and De Maio, 2019).