"This book offers the most comprehensive account of ancient Greek international law published in English in a century, while exploring the social and psychological factors that made international law effective in the Greek world. It makes three main contributions. First, it justifies the very act of taking ancient Greek international law as an historical subject. Second, it provides an updated history of select elements of that law. And third, it interprets those elements by means of legal sociology and social psychology, while also considering the insights offered by fields such as legal philosophy, law and economics, and New Institutional Economics. Along the way the book reinterprets phenomena as diverse as the Thessalian League, oaths, and international religious festivals. Combining the findings of recent scholarship on Greek history, identity, and social networks, novel readings of documentary and literary sources, and lessons from sociology and psychology, it shows how the webs of identity binding the Greek world together affected both the rules of international law and their effectiveness at guiding legal and economic behavior. A central claim is that international social identities spurred the growth of ethical and social motives and compliance with normative rules in Greek international relations just as within cities.

This study thus complicates and enriches a line of scholarly inquiry that focuses on the roles of formal institutions, structural features, and economic rationalism to explain aspects of Greek international society. It also offers a model for how to apply the findings of legal sociology to understanding the history of international law"-- Provided by publisher.