Since the 2008 economic meltdown, market-driven globalization has posed new challenges for governments. This collection introduces the innovative concept of “grey zones” of global governance, where international rules are often bent or ignored. These zones are significant, contested spaces for state policy and market behaviour to interact with respect to trade, the environment, food security, and investment.

Powerful incentives exist in the global economy for states to harmonize their policies through trade and investment agreements. But grey zones both promote uniformity in many areas of public life and facilitate diverse forms of capitalism in market societies. They enable governments to address the conundrum of balancing national and global economic benefits. Although they participate in the global economy, governments often ignore established rules of international economic law, making new rules or bending existing ones to advance their core interests. This book explores how operation within these grey zones of global governance enables countries to experiment with new modes of governance within their own domestic policy space.

At a time of growing nationalist sentiment, Grey Zones in International Economic Law and Global Governance explores creative local engagement with international economic law and offers a bold new way to understand public concerns about international trade and investment, food security, green energy, subsidies, and anti-dumping actions.