Suchergebnisse

Political risk is a critical component of international trade and it is often the source of concern for businesses willing to invest abroad in light of the limited ability of legal instruments to protect them against it. That is why further political risk minimization has traditionally been done through investor-oriented strategies that maximize the interests of the investor. These interests sometimes clash with the interests of the State: the State seeks to promote sustainable development interests while the private investor is pursuing its own interests. These are the situations where it is necessary to avoid conflict by aligning the interests of the foreign actor with the local polity, which can be done through mutually beneficial (i.e. both for states and for private trade actors) political risk mitigation strategies. In this regard, this paper demonstrates how such strategies can incentivize international trade actors to undertake commercial operations in a sustainable manner.

Abstract
The reform of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) has been tackled by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group (WG) III. Despite different objectives, both processes have relied on written submissions from various stakeholders. What are the structures and the narratives underlying the discourses of ISDS reform in these organizations? This article explores the content of 172 submissions by using mixed methods. It demonstrates that UNCITRAL WG III has involved less structured submissions whose content has expanded the initial mandate, with narratives encapsulating deeper disagreement among participants. By contrast, ICSID operated through a common pattern across submissions and a stronger focus on procedural issues, with less disagreement revealed in its narratives. The article proceeds in three steps. First, it compares the structure of discourses for each reform process by aggregating the content of submissions through computational analysis. Second, it relies on critical discourse analysis to reveal narratives that have emerged in each process. Lastly, the article explores submissions from actors who have participated in both processes to illustrate how they have navigated the tension between structures and narratives when reforming international investment arbitration.