When states use legal forms - Essay on Abbot et al's model of The Concept of Legalization (PDF)

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, language: English, abstract: Abbot et al divide the term of legalization into three criteria to create a model with which
Political Scientists and International Lawyers could be able to measure and differentiate
different legal statuses of international agreements. The division into the variables obligation,
precision and delegation shall provide the ability to score international institutions on the
different characteristics according to whether the characteristic may or may not be possessed.
Through the scoring of "High" or "Low" in each of the three categories, a possible outcome
of eight different forms of international institution legalization is given. Starting from Row I,
in which all three categories are scored with "High" and which is referred to with the term
"Hard law", Table 1 (p.406) shows all the possible combinations, ending with row VIII which
presents the softest form of commitments. The authors identify the edges of the graphic as
ideal types, on one side the hard law and its full legislation, on the other side an anarchical
state, still organized by institutions as sovereignty and diplomacy, but operated by principles
as the balance of power or spheres of influence. For each stage Abbot et al state examples that
might fit into the actual category. [...]