In the current investment climate, most investor-state disputes are settled through investment arbitration. Investor-state arbitration enables the foreign investor to bring a case before a neutral forum, whose decision is binding and enforceable in countries across the world. In instances where the dispute is governed by an arbitration clause, the clause places the disputing parties under the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal. In the event of achieving a victory, the investor may nonetheless come up against the obstacle of state sovereignty, even though the state party has ostensibly waived sovereign immunity from jurisdiction. If a state rejects to comply with an award, then investors must commence a worldwide search (forum-shopping), with a view to retrieving the assets that have been awarded. In instances where the state party is victorious, there is a danger that the award payment will not be made if the foreign investor has already declared bankruptcy. Although there are two Conventions (ICSID and the New York Convention) that facilitate the enforcement of arbitral awards, neither one is sufficient to preclude the emergence of the enforcement issue. In both instances, this issue is damaging as it wastes time and money, ultimately contributing to wider inefficiencies and uncertainties in investor-state arbitration. In addressing themselves to this problem and aspiring to the reduction of the obstacle of sovereign immunity from execution, scholars and practitioners have put forward two practical solutions; firstly, a hybrid sovereignty act has been proposed; secondly, it has been suggested that the World Bank could take punitive action, refusing to provide the state party with further loans until the award is resolved. However, these proposals have, to date, not been practically applied or developed. This thesis has two primary objectives: firstly, it attempts to analyse previous solutions that have been addressed to the enforcement issue of ICSID awards: secondly, it addresses itself to two alternatives: 1) that the ICSID Administrative council can review compliance with awards; 2) that countermeasures can be initiated against the failing state under the law of state responsibility (the ILC Articles on State Responsibility). In concluding, the thesis will consider the various advantages and disadvantages associated with each of the aforementioned solutions, ultimately proposing an approach that is best-suited to upholding the interest of the victorious party at the enforcement stage.

In 2011, Korea ratified the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA). This treaty remains controversial in Korean society, particularly because many Koreans claim that the indirect expropriation doctrine under investor-state arbitration in the investment chapter will allow global investors to challenge governmental regulation justified by the Korean constitution. Despite such criticism, the KORUS-FTA indirect expropriation doctrine and the Korean constitutional property doctrine share more than might be expected in practice. However, this substantive doctrinal convergence between national and global legal systems does not eliminate all risks of conflict between the nation-state and global investors; conflicts can occur whenever two actors interpret the same text differently. Once an investment dispute happens, independent investor-state arbitration reviews governmental action according to independent interpretative rules. Systems theory suggests that nation-states can turn such global challenges into opportunities by taking contextual control over global investment in relying on the global investment legal system of the global investment regime. The nation-state can convince global investors that the nation-state respects transnational investment mechanisms, whilst indirectly imbuing norm-making with minimum national interest without incurring serious damage to its reputation. To be specific, the nation-state can attract more foreign investors by accepting the indirect expropriation doctrine and the investor-state arbitration respected by global investors. Simultaneously, the nation-state can secure minimum control over global investment under legitimate regulatory power reflected in the same indirect expropriation clause. In addition, the nation-state can guide the investment tribunal to secure a balance between investment protection and the regulatory power of the host state by prescribing the proportionality principle. Contextual control can be a sub-optimal choice for the nation-state in the sense that it avoids a worst-case scenario by securing proportionality and predictability. In order to make this measure more effective, the current global investment legal system needs to secure more commensurate autonomy or autopoiesis by furthering simultaneous and balanced structural coupling with a greater variety of social powers. In this context, global constitutionalism provides national constitutional tools for the nation-state; specifically, democratic participation in national treaty-making procedures and autopoietic structuralisation of the investment arbitration mechanism can make the substantive contents and application of global investment law fairer and more acceptable, not only to global investors and strong states, but also to social movements and smaller countries. In the context of the KORUS-FTA, the Korean government needs to make the treaty terms of indirect expropriation clearer through democratic participation. At the same time, the Korea should pay attention to making arbitration process reflexive to more various social interests, whilst protecting its operation from inappropriate influences. Such measures can prevent KORUSFTA tribunals from making extremely unacceptable decisions to actors of the global investment regime, including the Korean government, although they could not guarantee ideal decisions that stratify all actors perfectly.

For the last two to three decades there has been an on-going legitimacy debate surrounding Investment Treaty Arbitration. States, scholars and public opinion argue that reform is needed. The European Union proposes the reform of Investor-State Arbitration through the creation of an Investment Court System. This is exemplified by recent European Union negotiated trade agreements such as the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement and the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement. This thesis discusses whether an Investment Court System is a step towards solving the legitimacy concerns or whether an Investment Court System will thrust Investor-State Arbitration into the relative unknown, exacerbating the validity questions enveloping Investor-State Arbitration. The thesis observes the criticisms raised by eminent scholars, States and campaigners against Investor-State Arbitration and the reforms proposed by the European Union Commission and European Union Parliament, in the form of an Investment Court System. Finally, the study looks briefly at how certain countries who have become disenfranchised with Investor-State Arbitration are approaching reform internationally, and comparatively discusses whether these options would be more beneficial to the Investor-State Arbitration community, rather than the European Union proposed Investment Court System.

In 1965, amid antagonism between capital-importing and capital-exporting states over investment protection, the World Bank created ICSID. ICSID facilitates the resolution of disputes between foreign investors and states. Since major initiatives to create investment rules have failed within the UN and OECD, ICSID is the only successful attempt to create a multilateral, inter-state organization dedicated to investment. This thesis probes the intellectual, political, and economic forces behind the creation and early development of ICSID. This study combines archival work, oral histories, and interviews with econometric work. On this basis, it illuminates how ICSID's creators-mainly staff in the World Bank's Legal Department-adapted their ideas to suit the charged political context. When disseminating the idea of ICSID to states, they relied on ambiguity, expertise, and incrementalism. These three characteristics constitute an approach to organization building that I term "modest multilateralism" since the World Bank's President praised ICSID as "a modest proposal." By illustrating how this approach operated in ICSID's case, I generate insights that are applicable to other international organizations. ICSID's creation differs from the expectations of institutionalist IR theory in important ways. First, there was little state leadership, and ICSID's founding Convention is devoid of substance-it merely outlines a procedure. In this way, it takes the idea of ambiguity to its extreme. Second, ICSID's founders took steps to shield the organization from the politics of investment protection: they asked states to send legal experts, not elected representatives, and avoided deliberative debate. Third, ICSID's design was explicitly evolutionary. ICSID can operate alongside changing substantive rules-multilateral, bilateral, or domestic. Finally, contrary to previous accounts, in this thesis the ICSID Secretariat emerges as a dynamic agent. The Secretariat actively pursued ratifications and advance consents to investor-state arbitration. The creation of ICSID fostered a community of practice, which subsequently redefined international investment law through treaty making and arbitral practice.

No contexto de avanço da globalização, o Investimento Estrangeiro Direto (IED) mostra-se como um dos principais veículos para a inserção internacional dos países. Como os objetivos das empresas transnacionais e dos Estados hospedeiros não são os mesmos, há a necessidade de adoção de políticas que levem à convergência. No plano legal, observou-se nas últimas décadas a consolidação do regime internacional dos investimentos, com o crescimento exponencial do número de tratados de investimento e de arbitragens investidor-Estado fundadas nos mesmos. Mas há insatisfações de parte a parte com o sistema. Por um lado, os países tentam limitar o ativismo dos árbitros mediante a revisão de seus tratados. Por outro, tanto os investidores como os Estados começam a perceber que não há vencedores reais na arbitragem, dadas as suas diversas deficiências. Nomeadamente: custos elevados, longa duração, incoerência nas decisões e desgaste para as relações investidor-Estado no longo prazo. Nesse diapasão, surgem propostas de alternativas. Pensadores do sistema, valendo-se do Planejamento de Sistemas de Disputas, têm desenvolvido Políticas de Prevenção de Controvérsias. Tais políticas fundamentam-se nas dinâmicas de busca de soluções baseadas em interesses contrapostas às baseadas na força e nos direitos seguindo processos de administração precoce de conflitos. Diversos países, em diferentes níveis de desenvolvimento, têm tido êxito na implementação dessas políticas. A difusão das melhores práticas, movimento apoiado por organizações internacionais, oferece oportunidades para a melhora da governança, através da promoção de maior coerência e coordenação nas ações do Estado, da transparência e do império da lei. O tema é de interesse para o Brasil, país que, diferentemente dos demais, nunca ratificou um único tratado de investimento. Isso porque já surgem vozes na indústria clamando por uma mudança de posição, diante da emergência do país também como um exportador de capital. Caso tal inflexão se confirme, o Brasil tem a oportunidade de tomar partido das melhores experiências internacionais, usando tais tratados como instrumentos na sua estratégia de desenvolvimento. / Against the background of globalization, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is perceived as one of the key vehicles in the pursuit of countries for global insertion. Since the purposes of transnational corporations and host States do not coincide, there is a need to implement policies leading to convergence. In the legal dimension, the last two decades have witnessed the consolidation of the international investment regime, with an exponential growth in the number of investment treaties and investor-State arbitration proceedings based on them. However, both sides are experiencing discontent with the current system. On the one hand, countries attempt to limit arbitrators activism, undertaking a review of treaties they are parties to. On the other, both investors and States have come to realize that there are no true winners in arbitration, in light of its several shortcomings. Namely: high costs, long duration, discrepant decisions and damages to the long term relationship between investors and States. In line with these concerns, several proposals for alternatives have come to light. System thinkers, based on concepts of Dispute Systems Design, have been developing Dispute Prevention Policies. Such policies are rooted in seeking interest-based solutions as opposed to power and rights-based ones following processes of early conflict management. Several countries, with varying levels of development, have succeeded in implementing such policies. Spreading best practices, an initiative supported by international organizations, allows for improvements in domestic governance, through the promotion of greater coherence and coordination in State actions, transparency and the rule of law. This matter is of interest to Brazil, a country that, unlike others, has never ratified a single investment treaty. There are now growing demands from Brazilian corporations for a shift in position, in view of the countrys emergence as a source of outward FDI. Should such a shift take place, Brazil has in its hands the opportunity to learn from international best practices and use such treaties as instruments in its development strategy.

No contexto de avanço da globalização, o Investimento Estrangeiro Direto (IED) mostra-se como um dos principais veículos para a inserção internacional dos países. Como os objetivos das empresas transnacionais e dos Estados hospedeiros não são os mesmos, há a necessidade de adoção de políticas que levem à convergência. No plano legal, observou-se nas últimas décadas a consolidação do regime internacional dos investimentos, com o crescimento exponencial do número de tratados de investimento e de arbitragens investidor-Estado fundadas nos mesmos. Mas há insatisfações de parte a parte com o sistema. Por um lado, os países tentam limitar o ativismo dos árbitros mediante a revisão de seus tratados. Por outro, tanto os investidores como os Estados começam a perceber que não há vencedores reais na arbitragem, dadas as suas diversas deficiências. Nomeadamente: custos elevados, longa duração, incoerência nas decisões e desgaste para as relações investidor-Estado no longo prazo. Nesse diapasão, surgem propostas de alternativas. Pensadores do sistema, valendo-se do Planejamento de Sistemas de Disputas, têm desenvolvido Políticas de Prevenção de Controvérsias. Tais políticas fundamentam-se nas dinâmicas de busca de soluções baseadas em interesses contrapostas às baseadas na força e nos direitos seguindo processos de administração precoce de conflitos. Diversos países, em diferentes níveis de desenvolvimento, têm tido êxito na implementação dessas políticas. A difusão das melhores práticas, movimento apoiado por organizações internacionais, oferece oportunidades para a melhora da governança, através da promoção de maior coerência e coordenação nas ações do Estado, da transparência e do império da lei. O tema é de interesse para o Brasil, país que, diferentemente dos demais, nunca ratificou um único tratado de investimento. Isso porque já surgem vozes na indústria clamando por uma mudança de posição, diante da emergência do país também como um exportador de capital. Caso tal inflexão se confirme, o Brasil tem a oportunidade de tomar partido das melhores experiências internacionais, usando tais tratados como instrumentos na sua estratégia de desenvolvimento. / Against the background of globalization, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is perceived as one of the key vehicles in the pursuit of countries for global insertion. Since the purposes of transnational corporations and host States do not coincide, there is a need to implement policies leading to convergence. In the legal dimension, the last two decades have witnessed the consolidation of the international investment regime, with an exponential growth in the number of investment treaties and investor-State arbitration proceedings based on them. However, both sides are experiencing discontent with the current system. On the one hand, countries attempt to limit arbitrators activism, undertaking a review of treaties they are parties to. On the other, both investors and States have come to realize that there are no true winners in arbitration, in light of its several shortcomings. Namely: high costs, long duration, discrepant decisions and damages to the long term relationship between investors and States. In line with these concerns, several proposals for alternatives have come to light. System thinkers, based on concepts of Dispute Systems Design, have been developing Dispute Prevention Policies. Such policies are rooted in seeking interest-based solutions as opposed to power and rights-based ones following processes of early conflict management. Several countries, with varying levels of development, have succeeded in implementing such policies. Spreading best practices, an initiative supported by international organizations, allows for improvements in domestic governance, through the promotion of greater coherence and coordination in State actions, transparency and the rule of law. This matter is of interest to Brazil, a country that, unlike others, has never ratified a single investment treaty. There are now growing demands from Brazilian corporations for a shift in position, in view of the countrys emergence as a source of outward FDI. Should such a shift take place, Brazil has in its hands the opportunity to learn from international best practices and use such treaties as instruments in its development strategy.

International investment agreements largely cover today’s transnational investments. These agreements confer certain substantive rights to foreign investors while simultaneously obliging host-states to act in a given manner so as to not interfere with the investments. Most international investment agreements further contain an arbitration clause which provides the investor with the means to enforce the substantive rights of the agreement by directly bringing a claim against the host-state before an arbitral tribunal. Consequently, privately contracted arbitrators have the authority to scrutinize and overrule essentially any sovereign act of the host-state that may affect the investment – judicial and legislative acts included. This practice affects not only the parties of the dispute; when the arbitral award claims superiority to the state’s electoral choices, it further constrains the exercise of sovereignty by the population of the host-state. As a result, the arbitrators who manage the disputes and the investors who initiate them have become central power-holders in the context of both international and domestic law. Meanwhile, the arbitrators and investors alike seem to be unaccountable to the states and individuals who are adversely affected by their power assertions. A commonly accepted feature of democracy is that those who govern and wield power should be accountable to those who are governed and subjected to this power. This thesis relates this notion to a Foucauldian understanding of power, domination and resistance. The primary aim of the thesis is to examine the interplay between the prominent subjects involved in investor-state arbitration and to what degree these subjects hold power in the form of transformative capacity. After this investigation into the relations of power, the thesis scrutinizes the subjugated subjects’ ability to exercise effective resistance through institutionalized accountability mechanisms. The thesis detects an accountability deficit in the regime and concludes that foreign investors and arbitrators hold a dominant position within the context of investor-state arbitration, while states and individuals find themselves in a state of domination. The international investment regime, as it currently stands, is thus found to suffer from a democracy deficit, while it concurrently seems to undermine domestic democratic institutions.

Bien qu’elles soient nécessaires et d’intérêt public, les mesures mises en place par les États pour faire face à la pandémie de Covid-19 peuvent être remises en cause par les investisseurs étrangers, alléguant qu’elles violent leurs droits protégés par les accords internationaux d’investissement, occasionnant ainsi un risque sans précédent d’arbitrages en matière d’investissement découlant de plus de 3.300 traités conclus dans le monde en la matière. La présente étude a pour objectif d’examiner l’incidence de l’arbitrage Investisseur-État sur l’action étatique en période de crise sanitaire. Concrètement, nous allons analyser les réclamations potentielles qui pourraient être portées par les investisseurs étrangers contre les États pour des mesures prises en vue de faire face à la crise sanitaire, ainsi que les défenses que les États pourraient opposer à ces réclamations. Il s’agira de voir s’il existe dans les accords internationaux d’investissement ou en droit international coutumier des exceptions ou défenses permettant aux États de prendre des mesures de sauvegarde dans l’intérêt général en période de crise sans engager leur responsabilité. / Although necessary and in the public interest, state responses to the Covid-19 pandemic can be challenged by foreign investors as violating their rights under international investment agreements, creating an unprecedented risk of investment arbitration arising from the more than 3,300 investment treaties in force worldwide. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of investor-state arbitration on state action in times of health crises. Specifically, we will analyse the potential claims that could be brought by foreign investors against states for actions taken in response to the health crisis, as well as the defences that states could raise against such claims. The aim will be to see whether there are any exceptions or defences in international investment agreements or customary international law that allow states to take safeguard measures in the public interest during a crisis without incurring liability.

Performance requirements act as policy instruments for achieving broadly-defined economic and developmental objectives of States, especially industrial and technological development objectives. Many States consider that performance requirements distort trade and investment flows, negatively impact global and national welfare and disrupt investment decisions compared to business-as-usual scenarios. As a result, a number of States have committed to prohibiting performance requirements in international investment agreements (“IIAs.”). Performance requirement prohibitions (“PRPs”) are meant to eliminate trade-distorting performance requirements and performance requirements which replace investor decision-making by State decision-making. This thesis focuses on providing answers to two research questions: first, how do States prohibit performance requirements in IIAs? And second, how should PRPs in IIAs be interpreted and applied? For the first time, this thesis: proposes a comprehensive understanding of PRPs in IIAs by drawing notably on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) Uruguay Round of negotiations and on the United States Bilateral Investment Treaty (“BIT”) Programme; develops a detailed typology and analysis of PRPs in IIAs through the identification of systematically reproduced drafting patterns; conducts the first critical and in-depth analysis of all arbitral awards which have decided claims based on PRPs in IIAs; analyses interpretation and application issues related to provisions that exempt government procurement from PRPs and to reservations that shield sensitive non-conforming measures or strategically important sectors from PRPs; and anticipates the application of most-favoured nation (“MFN”) treatment clauses to PRPs in the future. Finally, this thesis formulates proposals that can help interpret and apply existing PRPs and draft future PRPs in a more deliberate and informed way.