5 - Comparative Analysis of Recognition and Enforcement

Summary

Chapter 5 sets out a functional comparative analysis. In this way, the recognition and enforcement approaches can be isolated from the context-specific domains and concerns which gave rise to them. This formalisation of comparison highlights doctrinal convergence, and the increasing transnationalisation of recognition and enforcement. At first glance, the degree of convergence is somewhat surprising given that each approach is grounded in a different underlying legal instrument, separated in time by many decades, epistemologically constituted by different international actors and stakeholders, and overseen or developed by different governmental or intergovernmental organisations, and, arguably, aimed at differing goals. However, read together with the historical and contextual analysis in the earlier chapters of this part, a shared core of recognition and enforcement practice can be distilled and compared. Doing so offers an initial basis from which to analyse the future of recognition and enforcement – both in terms of anticipating how existing approaches are likely to be interpreted or applied but also with respect to ways in which such approaches may develop or evolve over time.