How Do Host States Respond to Investment Treaty Law? Some Empirical Observations

Abstract

The proliferation of investment treaty practice and international investment arbitration has led to a boom in the academic literature dissecting various aspects of the evolving rules on investment protection. With the exception of some notable contributions, however, there have been relatively limited efforts to analyse international investment law empirically, and in particular from the perspective of developing countries. This paper aims to fill this gap by offering some insights into the currently under-explored issue of how international investment law influences host state behaviour. More specifically, the aim of this study is to test a number of claims about the transformative impact of international investment law on national gover-nance in developing states. The analysis is carried out through a small-scale empirical case-study which focuses on how responses and reactions investment treaty law has elicited among government officials in host states that have experienced investment arbitration in a respondent capacity.