The United Nations was established following the conclusion of the Second World War and in the light of Allied planning and intentions expressed during that conflict. While the purposes are clearly wide-ranging, they do provide a useful guide to the comprehensiveness of its concerns. The question of priorities as between the various issues noted is constantly subject to controversy and change, but this only reflects the continuing pressures and altering political balances within the organisation. In particular, the emphasis upon decolonisation, self-determination and apartheid mirrored the growth in UN membership and the dismantling of the colonial empires, while increasing concern with economic and developmental issues is now very apparent and clearly reflects the adverse economic conditions in various parts of the world.

International law is based on the concept of the state. The state in its turn lies upon the foundation of sovereignty, which expresses internally the supremacy of the governmental institutions and externally the supremacy of the state as a legal person.

How did democracy promotion become a key goal of Sweden’s official development assistance (ODA)? Existing research has regarded comparatively high levels of ODA as a key indicator of Sweden’s foreign policy exceptionalism, supposedly rooted in domestic values of solidarity, democracy, and equality. However, such culturalist accounts of foreign policy exceptionalisms tend to mystify rather than clarify the influence of values. In this chapter, I seek to provide a different account of how values shape foreign policy, using the goal of democracy promotion through ODA as an illustrative case. While policy documents occasionally refer to unique Swedish experiences of democracy, I argue that the beliefs governing Swedish democracy promotion efforts rather result from contentious political processes and have been partly shaped by evolving international conjectures. Empirically, the paper analyzes how Swedish policymakers have framed the aims and strategies of democracy promotion in ODA from the 1960s to the 2010s.

It is impossible to separate Bartolus from the complex political environment in which he lived. In this world of institutional pluralism, legal scholars of his caliber were important players but they also had to constantly engage in balancing acts between competiting – and concurrent – sources of political authority and power.1 Law was not just an important tool for the exercise of power and buon governo, but an equally important currency for the legitimacy of polities and institutions.2 The fact that law was itself a plural, multidimensional stream of norms and ideas added to both its potential and the challenges faced by jurists.

An increasingly popular alternative to traditional aid is a “global public goods” (GPG) approach to reducing poverty and countering other global challenges. Having explained the origins and meaning of the concept, which is based on a rationale derived from welfare economics, I present two specific examples: REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and a global initiative for producing a vaccine against Covid-19. I briefly summarize debates about the merits of a GPG approach and how Scandinavian countries are increasingly adopting it, even though this may result in their level of aid falling, since GPG funding may not count. I conclude that if, as seems likely, many countries are slow to accept the shared responsibility that a GPG approach implies, then the reputation, and perhaps even identity, of the Scandinavian people may nevertheless be enhanced if they establish a position – as they have so far often done – among those in the vanguard.

Our world is going through a period of unprecedented change. In the first twenty years of the twenty-first century, we have faced the rise of terrorism, a global pandemic that shut down the world in three months, and the realization that impacts from climate change are upon us. These changes have sparked protests, movements, and reform. People are waking up to the reality that the future will be different from the past. Such times call on each of us to choose who we are and who we will become as individuals and as a global community. In a crisis, we can either fall apart or fall together.

Enter international law. The very purpose of international law is to help nations meet such challenges through peaceful cooperation. In this pursuit, international law has worked. For example, thanks to the various peaceful means for the settlement of international disputes and the general prohibition on the use of force, wars between nations have declined since 1945 to nearly zero.

The idea of human rights holds a special place in international law. It stands for a larger, loftier ideal that all people, by virtue of simply being, have certain inherent rights. These rights are meant to form a check on powers that would abuse our inherent freedoms, equality, and dignity. This vision of what human rights can do persists in the places and spaces of international law, however imperfectly, yet far too many human rights abuses continue to take place around the world every day.