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Although there are different notions of what legal norms sets apart from social norms, all concepts of law adhere to the principle of legal equality, according to which like cases are treated alike. Law thus requires that like cases are treated in a like manner. This, in turn, requires a high compliance rate with any given regulation. Without sufficient compliance rates, it is hardly possible to speak of law. But can a high degree of compliance be realized beyond the coercive capacities of the nation-state? The sceptical formulation of Herbert Kelsen (1966: 4) is famous: "The antagonism of freedom and coercion fundamental to social life supplies the decisive criterion. It is the criterion of law, for law is a coercive order." This point of view is also reflected in Realism as a theory of international relations (Morgenthau 1964, Waltz 1979). For Realism, legal constraints beyond the nation-state are non-existent or, at best, very weak (e.g. Krasner 1999 on human rights). Furthermore, communitarianists point out that questions of law and justice can meaningfully be dealt with only in communities that share common values and ideas (Goodin 1988, Miller 1995) and are equally doubtful about the possibility for law beyond the nation-state. In this sense, it seems fair to describe the question of compliance as the Achilles" heel of international regulations (see Werksmann 1996: xvi, Young 1999a: Chap. 4). This paper aims to shed doubt on the scepticism of Realism and Communitarianism. As opposed to the propositions of both theoretical strands we show that law beyond the nation-state is indeed possible and that compliance can even in a horizontal setting without centralized coercive capacities and without a single underlying social identity work sufficiently well. We furthermore show some of the building blocks of a successful elicitation of compliance beyond the nation-state and discuss if and in how far the EU is different from other international institutions in realising them. For developing this argument we start by introducing our research design and case selection (section 2). Section 3 introduces our empirical results, discusses their relevance for the analysis of compliance and draws some theoretical implications. This section is followed by a discussion of the relevance of the results for the study of European integration (section 4).

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