THE CONCEPT OF INTERNATIONAL MUNICIPAL LAW IN MODERN MUNICIPAL LAW RE- SEARCH
Authors:   Alfred Nobel University, Bocharova Natalia V. 
Published: February 2025

The article is devoted to the problem of the formation of international municipal law as a branch
of current international public law. There is a focus on studying the international aspects of local self-
determination in foreign legal sciences, with an emphasis on exploring the problems of the new role
of cities in international relations, as well as managerial problems of the municipal self-government
between national powers. Participation of cities in global political structures and international rule-
making, according to foreign experts, will provide the basis for the emergence of international municipal
law. For the development of the concept of international municipal law, an important role was played
by the work of the research group “The Role of Сities in International Law”, created by the International
Law Association (ILA), as well as the academic publication “Research Handbook on International Law and
Cities”, which brought together a great international team of scholars. A comprehensive analysis of the
impact of international law on cities, which act as leading units of local self-government, sheds light on the
growing global role of cities and argues for a new understanding of international law in light of the urban
turn. The materials of this collection allow us to identify the components of the concept of international
municipal law, or international local government law, formed in Western legal thought.
In domestic jurisprudence, the concept of international municipal law was formed primarily in the
works of M.O. Baymuratov, who was a pioneer in this area and remains a leading researcher of international
legal aspects of local self-government to this day. Unlike the Western doctrine, which emphasizes the
development and involvement of cities in international activities, M.O. Baymuratov and his scholars link
the emergence of international municipal law with the processes of constitutionalization of international
public law and the internationalization of the constitutional legal order of states. These processes are
accompanied by growing international recognition of the institution of local self-government, primarily
through its international legal regulation and contextualization of relevant aspects of the activities of
local self-government bodies, taking into account their international activities, in particular through the
development and adoption of a number of international multilateral intergovernmental treaties and the
preparation at the UN level of a draft World Charter of Local Self-Government.
In the field of municipal law, significant processes of borrowing international legal standards of
local self-government by national constitutional law are taking place, primarily through the system of
international legal treaties of the UN and the Council of Europe.
These “external” factors are associated with legal globalization, which is aimed at the standardization
and unification of the most important social-state relations, which are of significant importance not only
for the nation-state, but also for the entire international community of states. Local self-government is also
included in the circle of such priority-most important relations.