Diplomats Want Treaties: Diplomatic Agendas and Perks in the Investment Regime

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. AbstractLiterature on the investment treaty regime has shown little interest in diplomatic interests and agendas as drivers of treaty negotiations. This contrasts with other work on international economic relations, such as the negotiation of preferential trade agreements. Our paper fills this gap through a multi-method approach. In line with other areas of economic diplomacy we show that strategic foreign policy considerations have driven some investment treaty negotiations. Secondly, we show that some diplomats have been successful in promoting investment treaties to further their own individual interests. Rooted in public choice theory, this second causal mechanism is often overlooked in literature on economic diplomacy. British investment. Negotiations couldn't proceed, however, until the two states had settled a number of outstanding financial matters.Once settled, the Romanian Embassy in London handed over a draft text in the autumn of 1975 to which London responded a few months later. From that moment negotiations went swiftly. Bucharest was anxious to get the treaty signed at the Ministerial visit to London in March. If the UK stalled, Romanian insisted that "they would regard this as a markedly negative element in the development of closer Anglo-Romanian friendship." 4 To London, this sounded as if "the Romanians would stall on Concorde overlying rights, the purchase of further British aircraft and the joint venture agreements that [were] in the pipeline". Romania was strong-arming the United Kingdom to enter into a BIT. Moreover, Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, had announced his resignation just a few days before the visit, which ruled out a meeting with the Romanian Vice Premier. This made the signing of the BIT even more important and the "Romanians were much put out that at one stage it looked as though there would be nothing for Mr. Patan to sign …". Foreign policy agendas were not isolated to the Romanian side. While British negotiators sought to negotiate the best deal possible, FCO put pressure on them to conclude the talks in time for the visit. This was the first BIT London had negotiated with a Communist country and the first to be negotiated by any Western country with Romania. Accordingly, FCO officials found that the treaty's "significance is consequently rather more political than commercial". 5The 1976 UK-Romania BIT was but one of thousands of investment treaties signed over the last half a century, most of them bilater...

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