This thesis examines the rationale and on-going purpose of stabilisation clauses and the ways in which the clauses undermine the pursuit of sustainable development in developing countries. Two presumptions prevail in the literature on stabilisation clauses. The first is that developing countries compete for foreign investment on the basis of political risks. The second is that there are higher levels of political risks in developing countries. This thesis argues that neither presumption is true as such. The available evidence points to a more intense competition among foreign investors backed by their home governments for access to the extractive resources in developing countries. The political risks that stabilisation clauses are aimed at also exist, at least in equal measure, in developed countries. Nevertheless, stabilisation clauses are routinely recommended to developing countries as an ‘essential’ feature of an attractive investment climate. This recommendation is, however, not supported by any reliable evidence pointing to a link between stabilisation clauses and foreign investment inflow. The literature on the potential adverse impacts of stabilisation clauses has evolved in a compartmentalised way, focusing on their impact on the ability of host governments to enact environmental and/or human rights laws. This approach and focus are misplaced because in practice, stabilisation clauses rarely limit the ability of host governments to enact human rights and environmental laws. Rather, they limit their ability to alter their fiscal and economic laws and policies in other to integrate such laws and policies with their social and environmental objectives. The main implication of this limitation is that such governments are unable to mobilise the maximum of available funds to finance their sustainable development measures including those specifically directed at eradicating poverty, improving human rights standards and protecting the environment.

Today it is widely recognised that international investment activities can bring significant economic benefits for host countries. To promote a favourable investment climate, international organisations were set up to facilitate the settlement of foreign investment disputes, or to provide financial insurance for investors against non-commercial risks. Moreover, international financial institutions offer finance for governments or private enterprises to implement investment projects. States have also concluded international investment agreements to provide guarantees on the treatment and protection of foreign investors. Meanwhile, however, these investment activities can also create environmental problems for host countries and lead to human suffering. As states have been generally reluctant to take the initiative to secure effective implementation of environmental rules at the international level, allowing entities other than states to make environmental claims before international dispute settlement mechanisms offers practical approaches to protecting community interests and ensuring the fulfillment of international environmental standards in the course of international investment activities. This thesis considers the extent to which civil society organisations (CSOs) can promote, and have indeed promoted, environmental considerations in settling investment-related environmental claims through alternative means of dispute resolution on the international plane. It explores how CSOs have brought environmental perspectives in response to adverse impacts arising from investment activities. It also evaluates the implications of their claims for resolving relevant environmental issues and promoting compliance with international environmental standards during investment activities.

This thesis examines the regulatory and legislative approach taken in the United Kingdom to deal with deaths arising from work related activities and, in particular, deaths that can be directly attributed to the behaviour of corporations and other organisations. Workplace health and safety has traditionally been seen in the United Kingdom as a regulatory function which can be traced to the very earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. With an emphasis on preventing workplace accidents and ill-health through guidance, advice and support, the health and safety legislation and enforcement regime which had evolved over the best part of two centuries was considered inadequate to effectively punish corporations considered responsible for deaths caused by their activities following a series of disasters in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. To address this apparent inadequacy, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was introduced creating the offence of corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide. Based on a gross breach of a relevant duty of care resulting in the death of a person, the Act effectively changed what had previously considered a matter of regulation, an approach that had obvious weaknesses and shortcomings, to one of crime and criminal law. Whether this is the best approach to dealing with deaths caused by an organisation is challenged in this thesis and the apparent distinction between ‘criminal’ and ‘regulatory’ offences is also examined. It was found that an amended Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to include a specific offence of corporate killing, in conjunction with the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008 would almost certainly have resulted in a more effective approach to dealing with organisations responsible for causing deaths as consequence of their activities. It was also found that there was no substantive difference between ‘regulatory’ and ‘criminal’ law other than the stigma associated with the latter, and that distinction would almost certainly disappear, at least in the context of worker safety, as a consequence of the penalties available following the introduction of the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 has been hailed as radical and ground-breaking legislation and it can clearly be considered to be a successful piece of legislation because between coming into force on 4 April 2005 and the third quarter of financial year 2013/14 it provided full legal recognition of one’s gender identity to 3,664 individuals and interim recognition to 173 individuals; only 180 applications had been refused and 93 applications have been withdrawn. So clearly the law is doing what it was intended to do. However the legislation is not without its problems and it is far from perfect. This thesis argues that the UK Government, when enacting the legislation, adopted the medical model of transsexualism as understood within medicine in 2003/04 which resulted in the legislation enacting strong gatekeeper roles for medical professionals and the Gender Recognition Panel which means that it is difficult for one to obtain legal recognition of one’s gender identity under UK law. The thesis proposes that an alternative model of legal recognition based on gender self-declaration is possible and would achieve the same outcome but with less difficulties for the individual.

This thesis defends the position that the Eastern Orthodoxy has the potential to develop, on the basis of its core concepts and doctrines, a new political theology that is participatory, personalist and universalist. This participatory political theology, as I name it, endorses modern democracy and the values of civic engagement. It enhances the process of democracy-building and consolidation in the SEE countries through cultivating the ethos of participation and concern with the common good among and the recognition of the dignity and freedom of the person. This political-theological model is developed while analyzing critically the traditional models of church-state relations (the symphonia model corresponding to the medieval empire and the Christian nation model corresponding to the nation-state) as being instrumentalized to serve the political goals of non-democratic regimes. The participatory political-theological model is seen as corresponding to the conditions of the constitutional democratic state. The research is justified by the fact the Eastern Orthodoxy has been a dominant religiouscultural force in the European South East for centuries, thus playing a significant role in the process of creation of the medieval and modern statehood of the SEE countries. The analysis employs comparative constitutional perspectives on democratic transition and consolidation in the SEE region with the theoretical approaches of political theology and Eastern Orthodox theology. The conceptual basis for the political-theological synthesis is found in the concept and doctrines of the Eastern Orthodoxy (theosis and synergy, ecclesia and Eucharist, conciliarity and catholicity, economy and eschatology) which emphasize the participatory, personalist and communal dimensions of the Orthodox faith and practice. The paradigms of revealing the political-theological potential of these concepts are the Eucharistic ecclesiology and the concept of divine-human communion as defining the body of Orthodox theology. The thesis argues that with its ethos of openness and engagement the participatory political theology presupposes political systems that are democratic, inclusive, and participatory, respecting the rights and the dignity of the person. The political theology developed here calls for a transformation and change of democratic systems towards better realization of their personalist and participatory commitments. In the context of the SEE countries the participatory political theology addresses the challenges posed by alternative authoritarian political theologies practiced in neighboring regions.

People who (in relation to their personal taxation) defraud the Inland Revenue and people who (in relation to their supplementary benefit payments) defraud the Department of Health and Social Security are similarly engaged in economic crimes which result in loss to the public purse. These crimes provoke differential political, official, judicial and public responses. Differential response to tax and supplementary benefit fraud can neither be explained by reference to qualitative differences in the commission of the illegal acts involved, nor by the crude suggestion that differential regulation of tax and benefit fraud is nothing more than a conspiracy of the rich against the poor. Rather, such differential response derives from the different combinations of legal, economic, social and ideological histories of these two forms of fraud. In this thesis, analysis of these differential and combinatory histories centres on the material conditions and ideological discourses within which differential response is made possible. In addition the vocabularies of motive offered for both the commission and regulation of tax and supplementary benefit fraud are analysed. These analyses together reveal that differential and shifting material and ideological conditions create different opportunities and justifications for both tax and supplementary benefit fraud. At the same time they also enable policy makers continually to change the modes of regulation of both types of crime. The bulk of the thesis is aimed at demonstrating how and why knowledges about taxation and welfare are not immutable but are forever open to deconstruction and challenge.

This thesis considers the social stigmatisation of involuntary childlessness in Sub-Saharan Africa. It explores the socio-legal issues that arise when involuntary childlessness is given a gendered meaning and how this contributes to the social stigmatisation of involuntarily childless women in this developing region. The social stigmatisation of involuntarily childless women in Sub-Saharan Africa has been widely documented in the social science literature. This body of literature on the gendered meaning of infertility and its impact on involuntary childless women has helped to change attitudes and perspectives on involuntary childlessness in the international public health framework. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently designated infertility as a global public health concern and has canvassed for wider access to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in the developing world. The case for wider access to ARTs in the developing world has been made on a number of grounds, including those of human rights and social justice. International public health policy makers have also canvassed for wider access of affordable ARTS based on the notion of universal access to reproductive health care. This thesis queries why the law, unlike medicine and other disciplines, has been slow to respond to the gendered social stigmatisation of involuntary childlessness in developing regions of the world such as Sub Saharan Africa. It explores whether the law can facilitate wider access to affordable ARTs based on the notion of universal access to reproductive health care as canvassed by international public health policy makers. It also considers whether law in its regulatory function can be used as an agent of change to combat and curb the social stigmatisation of infertility and involuntary childless women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This thesis proposes a new understanding of Article 106(2) TFEU using composite legal and economic interrogative frameworks. Article 106(2) provides that under specified conditions, any Treaty rule may be disapplied with respect to services of general economic interest (‘SGEIs’). The underlying research tests two principal claims concerning Article 106(2). The first is that it is the central Treaty provision for reconciling EU and Member State interests concerning SGEIs, and the second, is that it is a strict exception. The purely legal component of the analysis comprises internal and external accounts of Article 106(2). The former concerns its operation on a standalone basis, with the latter dissecting its interaction with other TFEU derogation mechanisms. The internal analysis reveals the seeming volatility of the manifest error standard and considers the effects of enduring difficulties concerning proportionality review. The external account discloses the ubiquitous contingency of Article 106(2), resulting in it being side-lined in a variety of ways. In overall terms, Article 106(2) is shown not to be the central Treaty mediating mechanism for SGEIs that it may be capable of being. The combined legal and economic component of the thesis is based on deploying the theory of market failure and its analogue, government failure, in order to test whether Article 106(2) is a strict exception. Market failure is used to assess SGEI verification. Government failure is used to assess the disapplication of other Treaty provisions under Article 106(2). The market failure analysis reveals that manifest error control is strict for efficiency related market failures, for EU circumscribed distributional objectives, and occasionally, elsewhere. The government failure analysis discloses significant but avoidable weaknesses in disapplication review, but with pronounced change over time, including a relative recent partial revival of its strictness following Altmark. In the aggregate, the combination of legal and economic analysis shows Article 106(2) not to be a strict exception, except in limited circumstances. In the light of the findings on centrality and strictness, proposals for the reorientation of Article 106(2) are made.

This research looks into the implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda recommendation that intellectual property technical assistance (IPTA) programs to developing countries should be country-specific in their design, process of evaluation and delivery. Using the example of Malaysia and Kenya, this thesis identifies and examines local factors in Malaysia and Kenya to determine what makes them specific to these countries and how significant they are to the effectiveness of IPTA programs. Developing countries’ struggle in adapting their national systems to meet the global IP standards resulted in the provision of IPTA programs that have been criticized as ineffective due to the former one size fits all approach that did not tailor the programs to each developing country’s needs. The WIPO Development Agenda recommended a country-specific approach to address the previous approach. Although this recommendation has the potential to significantly revise the way WIPO provides technical assistance (TA) to developing countries, this research states that without proper implementation there is the possibility that WIPO IPTA programs will fall back into its old ways. This research tests the country-specific recommendation in Malaysia and Kenya by using a historical approach into understanding why these countries have local factors that permeate almost every aspect of their development, what makes these factors country-specific and how these factors could impact IPTA programs. The research finds that even though the local conditions in Malaysia and Kenya appear similar, the historical perspective show how the local conditions evolved into factors specific to each country with varying degrees of impact on IPTA programs. The findings suggest that implementing this recommendation would need to go beyond identifying the relevant local conditions, it requires an understanding of what makes them country-specific to help determine how to factor them into the design and delivery of IPTA programs.

This thesis considers the different understandings of what 'law' is and applies this to the specific area of international development law. Two central questions are addressed. Firstly, what is the basis of international development law? Put another way, in what sense can international development law be spoken of as 'real' or 'true' law? Secondly, and a precursor to the first question is the question of what is 'real' law. The following preliminary questions are also addressed: what is 'international development law'? What are the sources of international development law? Who formulates international development law? What characteristics or criteria can one use to identify law and thus identify international development law as true law? Paralleling growth of new areas of international law, and aspiring to a 'hard law', is a growing body of international development law. After World War II a distinct body of international development law emerged fostered by the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia. Despite the continued relevance of the legal aspects of the new international economic order (NIEO) debate of the 1970s, and the growing body of instruments, there is a dearth of current literature on the notion of international development law and its legal validity. This thesis addressed this gap. The questions are approached through a multiple grid of legal understandings. The thesis considers what stands as law in the positivist tradition, in the natural law or aspirational law tradition, and in the more recent tradition of legal process. Each of the types of law considered shows the different bases and varying status of international development law. Taken together, these also show the emergence of a legal structure consisting of norms, principles and rules. All this also points to increasing legalization of international development with a discernible movement towards hard law.