Making autonomies matter: a case study on autonomy accommodation
Sarah Stephan is a researcher at the ÅIPI and also functions as the Project Manager for the project Open Doors that is focusing on gender equality, empowerment and participation in Azerbaijan. Sarah’s research interests include European and Public International Law, in particular post-conflict governance and multilevel governance in the European Union and beyond. Sarah holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from Helsinki University and a Bachelor’s degree in European and Comparative Law from the Hanse Law School of the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg. Mariehamn 13.5.2014 In today’s globalized and interdependent world, almost all areas of life are objects of international agreements and are regulated to varying extents by international bodies. Certainly, the upward dispersion of powers to international organizations carries implications for the sub-state level. As law-makers and regulatory bodies, international organizations impact the life of states but also of sub-state entities, such as federal units or autonomies. You can read more about the impact of EU membership on the Åland Islands, as an example, here and here. But how do international legal frameworks regulate the co-operation between dissimilar state entities with ‘actor capacity’? What capacities do individual international organizations have to institutionally accommodate autonomies? I have recently […]