Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements
PRESENTER:
Wolfgang Alschner
University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law
ABSTRACT:
Traditional means of content analysis are ill-equipped to deal with the
vast universe of international investment agreements (IIAs). In this
article, we propose a novel approach to efficiently investigate over 2100
IIAs and their 24,000 articles in unprecedented detail by treating treaty
text as data. Our suggested metric yields new and surprising insights
about the IIA universe at four different levels. First, at the global
level, we use our approach to investigate the effect of asymmetries on
negotiation outcomes finding that developed countries tend to be the IIA
systems rule-makers, while developing countries tend to be its
rule-takers. Second, on the country level, our method can trace
consistency and legal innovation in national treaty networks uncovering
hitherto unknown investment policy changes such as the Finnish shift to a
pre-establishment template in 1999. Third, on the inter-treaty level, our
metric can detect investment policy diffusion highlighting that Israel,
for instance, copied its bilateral investment treaty (BIT) language from
British investment agreements. Finally, on the individual treaty level,
our approach enables us to assess the novelty of newly concluded
agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, by relating them to prior
practice. Our metric thus provides researchers, practitioners and
policy-makers with a powerful novel tool to analyze the IIA universe.