Approaches to Foreign Direct Investment in Legal Research

Abstract

This paper provides a critical introduction to the approaches taken in legal research to address issues relating to foreign direct investment (FDI). It starts from a broad understanding of legal approaches to FDI, as encompassing substance and procedure under both national and international law. On this basis, it provides an overview of the legal regimes governing FDI, analyses the core conceptualizations of the field in legal scholarship and investment law practice, and offers an introduction to methods of legal research relating to FDI. For this purpose, the paper proposes that the complex legal architecture governing FDI, which is based on a multitude of applicable legal instruments under domestic and international law, and involved a diverse set of actors using them in order to shape international investment relations, FDI regulation is best understood as a transnational legal order. On the basis of this approach, the paper then concentrates on the international legal aspects of FDI regulation and provides a typology of research questions that can be asked in IIL and gives an overview of methods of legal research used to tackle them.