Commercial Diplomacy and Political Risk

Gertz, Geoffrey

doi:10.1093/isq/sqx079

Cited by 33 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…None of this is to say that states are powerless (Roberts 2010;Gertz 2018). Numerous governments have cited the unfair playing field created by the growth of thirdparty finance arrangements, using the controversial optics as their own rhetorical cudgel.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Financialization of International Law

Kalyanpur¹,

Newman²

2020

Perspect. polit.

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We investigate how the international investment regime turned into an investment vehicle. Through the process called third-party funding, financiers back international legal claims by firms against countries and in turn seek a share of any potential award. More generally, we add to debates on how international regimes evolve and at times generate unanticipated consequences. Building off work on the sociology of fields, we argue that institutional change can occur when individuals from different fields interact. Each field has its own local practices and beliefs about how governance institutions like international regimes function. When professionals from one field analyze problems in another, they use the tools from their native field. If potential solutions provide material and status benefits for the dominant actors in the targeted regime, cross-field coalitions can form and change the targeted regime’s practice. As hedge funds in the finance field and lawyers in the international law field sought to reinvent themselves after the 2008 financial crisis, they teamed up to make Investor State Dispute Settlement a speculator’s game. Theoretically, we embed theories of regime change within larger social relations, highlighting the importance of informal interactions among regime operators for the use and function of governance institutions. We underscore the role of field interdependence as actors engage in contestation across social and political domains. Empirically, we demonstrate the way in which financialization has had far-reaching consequences that extend well beyond traditional economic sectors, reconfiguring the practice of international law.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Financialization of International Law

Kalyanpur¹,

Newman²

2020

Perspect. polit.

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“…Second, foreign firms or other states may exert pressure on governments to change their laws. Some scholars find evidence that home states are lobbied by domestic firms who seek arbitration access (Allee and Peinhardt 2014; Maurer 2013; Wellhausen 2015) while others find less evidence of lobbying (Gertz 2018;Poulsen 2015;St John 2018). We think that if firms lobby their host governments for access to arbitration, they are more likely to lobby for access to be written into their contracts.…”

Section: Iii24 Alternative Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Investor–State Dispute Settlement Cases Influence Domestic Environmental Regulation? the Role of Respondent State Capacity

Berge

Berger

2020

SSRN Journal

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“…Second, foreign firms or other states may exert pressure on governments to change their laws. Some scholars find evidence that home states are lobbied by domestic firms who seek arbitration access (Allee & Peinhardt, 2014;Maurer, 2013;Wellhausen, 2015) while others find less evidence of lobbying (Gertz, 2018;Poulsen, 2015;St John, 2018). We think that if firms lobby their host governments for access to arbitration, they are more likely to lobby for access to be written into their contracts.…”

Section: Alternative Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric Diffusion: World Bank 'Best Practice' and the Spread of Arbitration in National Investment Laws

Berge

John

2019

SSRN Journal

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Globally, 74 countries have domestic investment laws that mention investor-state arbitration and 42 of these laws provide consent to it. That is, they give foreign investors the right to bypass national courts and bring claims directly to arbitration. What explains this variation, and why do any governments include investor-state arbitration in domestic legislation? We argue that governments incorporate arbitration into their domestic laws because doing so was labelled 'international best practice' by specialist units at the World Bank. We introduce the concept of asymmetric diffusion, which occurs when a policy is framed as international best practice but only recommended to a subset of states. No developed state consents to arbitration in their domestic law, nor does the World Bank recommend that they do so. Yet we show that governments who receive technical assistance from the World Bank's Foreign Investment Advisory Service are more likely to include arbitration in their laws. We first use event history analysis and find that receiving World Bank technical assistance is an exceptionally strong predictor of domestic investment laws with arbitration. Then we illustrate our argument with a case study of the Kyrgyz Republic's 2003 law.

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Commercial Diplomacy and Political Risk

Cited by 33 publications

References 66 publications

The Financialization of International Law

The Financialization of International Law

Do Investor–State Dispute Settlement Cases Influence Domestic Environmental Regulation? the Role of Respondent State Capacity

Asymmetric Diffusion: World Bank 'Best Practice' and the Spread of Arbitration in National Investment Laws

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