Shadows across the Path 479schools and social work agencies— is constantly at work to instill an ethic of
obedience.
International law, lacking this elaborate institutional network, is neces-
sarily more dependent on voluntary, uncoerced cooperation by its subjects.
One way to achieve this is by mobilizing populations within the various
states in the cause of a global rule of law. Ea gleton regretted, in the 1940s,
that this had not yet taken place. A half century later, it would be diffi cult to
say whether things had changed signifi cantly. International law remained
heavily reliant on the good will of the governments that are subject to it.
Whether this is a healthy state of aff airs has been, and continues to be, the
subject of vigorous debate.
One of the more remarkable facts of world history, however, is how well
this precarious mechanism of largely voluntary compliance actually works
in practice. It is no small challenge to explain satisfactorily just how this
could be so. Th e biochemistry of oxytocin might provide some clues here.
But our own exploration has been in a rather diff erent direction. It has in-
volved looking at the concrete challenges that have arisen in the world of
interstate relations, and at the various schools of thought that arose to make
sense out of them.
Th ose schools of thought have been remarkably stable, at least in general
outline, since the late nineteenth century. Perhaps that is no bad thing. It
may be a healthy sign that international lawyers have become better at doing
things than at thinking thoughts, better at constructing institutions on the
ground than speculative systems in the libraries (if not, indeed, in the clouds).
Francis Bacon’s spiders may be less in evidence than formerly— for better or
worse— but his bees and ants are busier than ever. In the early twenty- fi rst
century, there was every indication that much remained for them to do.