Decolonial Comparative Law and Regionality in Trade Law

Abstract

Despite the rise of research focusing on regions, international trade law suffers from a deficit of research on comparative regional international economic orders. With the decline in multilateralism, there is room for more scholarship by trade law scholars to interrogate regionality through a comparative lens—particularly decolonial comparative law—within this subfield. The chapter asks: What insights, if any, does a comparative approach to the study of regionality and trade law engender? Regionality in international trade is marked by a distinct pluralism, and it is primarily characterized by historical, sociocultural, and path-dependency contexts. Regional economic orders, especially those in Africa, are constituted by both formal and informal trade regimes. Yet the contemporary contours of regionality as co-constituted by formal and informal trading regimes have hardly been effectively captured in trade law scholarship about these regions. Accordingly, the chapter situates regionality at the intersection of international relations, comparative law, comparative regionalism, and decolonial scholarship.