| Summary: | This thesis is a work of international jurisprudence and political economy. It argues that the increasing violence of transformative interventions in the Third World represents the intensification of a dynamic inaugurated with the institution of the post-war settlement. The instituted dynamic both reveals and is revealed in the constitution of the space of the international and relations within it. The dynamic is a diffuse 'rationality of rule', operative in terms of an assertion of universality for a constellation of specific values and forms of social, economic and political organisation. It works through establishing a relation between the constituent parts of the ideological-institutional complex we call `international law' and is given impetus and logical coherence by the concepts of development and economic growth. Paradoxically, the dynamic is generated by a `critical instability' at the heart of international law. The instability arises from the aspirational dimension of international law in which it bears an enduring relation to an idea of justice. This relation holds out a promise of universality which has inspired attempts by the Third World to use international law as a site of political struggle. However through a combination of its ongoing movement and transcendent securing, the `critical instability' of international law is stilled. A particular content is (re)ascribed to the universal and stabilised in that `universal' position. Attempts to call on the promise of international law have therefore had the unintended consequence of legitimising an expanding domain of international intervention into the Third World. The unfolding of this universalising logic has produced 6 within international law a project of violent transformation and made the idea(l) of self government in the Third World illusory
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