Planners of a new world of better rules face defenders of the way the world already works. The story is about itself and thus its tellers. Post-modern theory goes further. There are only stories and they are only about themselves and their tellers' preoccupations. Stories about international legal theory, like most legal and political talk in the modern world, relate to a single, controlling argument.
Modernity is but a running argument over the practical implications of liberal ideas.
Where modern theory finds rules, post-modern theory puts texts. Social process is discourse by various means. Yet texts contain rules, and rules contain texts. Discourse depends on the rules that discourse produces. Rules and the choices they afford connect arguments over liberal premises to people's practical concerns.