Political science and extraterritoriality

Although extraterritoriality is at its core an issue of law and jurisdiction, in its conceptualization and practice - whether as legislative prescription, claims-making, or attempts to apply and enforce legal rules - it is also profoundly political. The focus of empirical (or positivist) political science is on understanding how systems of governance emerge and operate. The nature of the questions political scientists ask, and the approaches they use, may differ from those in adjacent disciplines of law and public policy, insofar as the main goal is generally not to propose solutions to specific problems, but to explore and account for deeper behavioral and institutional underpinnings. Empirical political science research into the origins, characteristics, and consequences of extraterritoriality and extraterritorial threats has several disciplinary hallmarks. A further defining feature of constructivist and critical political science approaches is attention to theorizing various forms of agency, along with their roles in creating transnational regulatory landscapes.