Can border control practices be understood as forms of authoritarianism? This paper employs Tom Ginsburg’s theory of ‘authoritarian international law’ to ask whether liberal and/or democratic states may be embracing and contributing to ‘authoritarian’ norms in their treatment of outsiders and citizens alike in the process of managing presence in their territories. Ginsburg’s concept focuses on states championing sovereignty over rights and cooperating to further authoritarian acts. Recent years have witnessed liberal democracies deploy controversial border and immigration control techniques, championing sovereign prerogative over rights-based understandings of their international obligations. Liberal and democratic states have also embraced cooperation to manage or deter migration, including with authoritarian states. Are these states helping to construct an authoritarian international law through border control? Whether they are may hold new answers for the question of whether a liberal society must embrace its principles at or beyond its borders rather than merely within.
