The Legal Framework of the OSCE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest regional security organisation, possesses most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to an international organisation, but lacks a constitutive treaty and an established international legal personality. Moreover, OSCE decisions are considered mere political commitments and thus not legally binding. As such, it seems to correspond to the general zeitgeist, in which new, less formal actors and forms of international cooperation gain prominence, while traditional actors and instruments of international law are in stagnation. However, an increasing number of voices - including the OSCE participating states - have been advocating for more formal and autonomous OSCE institutional structures, for international legal personality, or even for the adoption of a constitutive treaty. The book analyses why and how these demands have emerged, critically analyses the reform proposals and provides new arguments for revisiting the OSCE legal framework.

Mateja Steinbrück Platise is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. She is also Lecturer at the Universität Heidelberg and Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Previously, she worked as Legal Officer at the European Court of Human Rights, Lecturer at the Université de Lille, Universität Hamburg and Univerza v Ljubljani, and as research assistant at the European Studies Centre of the University of Oxford. She has published on international institutional law, human rights law and international dispute settlement, and has been awarded Marie Curie Fellowship for her project on Responsibility of International Organisations for Human Rights Violations.

Carolyn Moser is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. In her previous position at the Basel Institute on Governance, she worked as a consultant on anti-corruption and rule of law projects in Asia, Europe, and North Africa inter alia for the World Bank, the European Parliament, the OSCE, and national development agencies. She studied law and political science at Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and holds a Ph.D. from Universiteit Utrecht. Her research interests relate to public governance and accountability as well as to foreign and security policy in Europe.

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg, a professor at Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, and Basel, and a William C. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan. She has been a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011–2015) and served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010–2012). Her current research interests relate to public international law including its history, global animal law, global governance and global constitutionalism.