National Governance and Investment Treaties

Josef Ostřanský has worked as lecturer and research fellow at various universities in Europe, Australia and Latin America, and has published extensively on international investment law. He has worked as a consultant on international economic law with international organisations. In 2021, he won the CIBEL Global Young Scholar Network Prize. Facundo Pérez Aznar is Senior Researcher at the Geneva Center for International Dispute Settlement and Associate Professor of International Economic Law at the University of Buenos Aires. He acted as counsel in numerous in international investment disputes. His has published extensively on different aspects of international economic law and dispute settlement.

• 1. National governance and investment treaties; 2. Situating the engagements with the investment treaty regime in Argentina, Czech Republic, India, and Mexico; Part I. Discursive and Ideological Effects of Investment Treaties on National Governance; 3. Narratives of progress and economic development; 4. Narratives of education and constraint; Part II. Formal and Informal Institutional Effects on International Investment Agreements on National Governance; 5. The state's institutional rearrangements and international investment agreements; 6. defending the state in ISDS and preventing disputes; 7. International investment agreements and national lawmaking (part 1): four country snapshots; 8. International investment agreements and national lawmaking (part 2): multifaceted uses if IIA-arguments in lawmaking.

'There is a saying that 'no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.' After reading this book, you may think that 'no theory about investment treaties survives contact with reality.' Many international lawyers are content to analyse issues at the interstate level without getting their hands dirty with empirical evidence, particularly at a national and sub-national level. But when socio-legal scholars come along who are able to take us deep into the messy entanglement of actors, narratives and relationships in four different national contexts, we are able to develop a much more detailed, compelling and nuanced understanding of how investment treaties empower and constrain the behaviour of states. This book stands as a testament to how scholarship in this field is maturing and deepening.' Anthea Roberts, Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University