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This chapter examines multilateral agreement as a strategy for developing competition law on the global level. It identifies the potential for multilateral agreement, outlines the forms such agreement might take, and dissects the issues that will influence support of a multilateral strategy. The analysis emphasizes the need to adapt any multilateral agreement to the specific needs of competition law development rather than to follow pre-existing forms or subject it to pre-existing institutional procedures. Time and flexibility are likely to be critically important in fashioning an effective strategy, because they allow the obligations of states and the relationships among states to be adapted to the process of economic development. An effective strategy will call for active support from all types of participants in the global economy. The chapter then sketches a conception of multilateral agreement called a ‘commitment pathway’, which is specifically designed to take these factors into account.

This chapter provides yet another eclectic analysis, this time of the still-irreconcilable controversy surrounding the “appropriate” kinds and extent of governmental regulation of MNCs as entities and FDI as process. The initial section explains why so little progress has been made in establishing meaningful international rules covering these international business phenomena. Next is an abbreviated survey of the major bilateral agreements and voluntary codes of conduct that seek to regulate FDI-related activities to serve the common good. The conflicting attitudes towards the appropriate kinds and extent of multilateral regulations are explained in depth by examining two major loci of contention: the would-be Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and the existing Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The increasing significance of activist non-government organizations as unofficial regulators of MNC behavior is examined in the concluding section.

A brief review is presented of the history of developing country involvement in GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the experience of the first five years of the WTO (World Trade Organization), including efforts to negotiate the accession of China and Russia. The sections of the chapter are as follows: Special and differential treatment; Changing attitudes towards the trading system; Developing country participation in the WTO; Implementation of multilateral agreements; Expanding membership; and Conclusion.

This chapter examines a century of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) for acts of delegation to international organizations and to private actors. Theories of delegation suggest looking to the state as the likely engine of private authority. With more governing to do, states are enlisting others to help them through the delegation of authority. Drawing on a random sample of 152 multilateral environmental treaties, sampled from all extant multilateral treaties from 1857 to 2002, the chapter asks how often states delegate to private actors, and for what tasks. It shows that delegated authority in MEAs is indeed on the rise but not as a percentage of total governance activities. Instead, there is an overall increase in the amount of governance by both public and private actors. The data also show that states prefer to delegate specific policy functions: monitoring and implementation.

After several decades a reasonable assessment of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can be made using evidence drawn from a broad sample of experiences. The results are mixed, but there is doubt that PTAs are, as yet, a big factor. PTAs currently cover only a small fraction of trade in terms of the actual amount of liberalization achieved (that is, above and beyond multilateral agreements). Intra-PTA trade shares are small in most cases and the institutional aspects of “deep integration” do not seem to be advanced that much by PTAs. PTAs have not achieved as much as might be thought, and that the multilateral process has been, and remains, central to the trade liberalization process.

This chapter deals with the last year of the 1980s and all of the subsequent decade. Though mostly placid for ICSID, the period was one of momentous change elsewhere in the World Bank Group and, of course, in the world at large. Section I describes the growing network of investment treaties, which was to have a tremendous impact on ICSID. The Multilateral Agreement on Investment episode is also discussed. There were many new signatures and ratifications of the ICSID Convention in the 1990s. They are recounted in Section II, which also looks at the working of the ICSID Secretariat during the decade. An overview of the cases submitted to ICSID between 1989 and 2000 is provided in Section III. Among them were the first Additional Facility cases. The Additional Facility cases, six of which were brought to the Centre under the investment chapter of the NAFTA, are examined in Section IV. The potential of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to generate cases for ICSID started to be realized in earnest in this period. Several of the new BIT cases led to decisions that were particularly influential in the development of subsequent jurisprudence. These leading BIT cases are examined in Section V.

This chapter examines the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investment (FDI). It introduces the basic theoretical framework developed in Bubb and Rose-Ackerman (2007) and in Tobin and Rose-Ackerman (2008), and then summarizes the empirical finding of Tobin and Rose-Ackerman. It offers some thoughts on the rise of the BITs regime and its implications for the possibility of a Multilateral Investment Agreement. The chapter shows that BITs have a positive impact on FDI flows to developing countries, but only in interaction with the political and economic environment for investment.

Today's international migrant flows are connected to broader processes of economic integration that for the past half century have been shrinking the globe. Places that are linked to one another by flows of goods, capital, commodities, and information also tend to be linked by flows of people, in a process that many people today refer to as “globalization.” This realization suggests a third way between the extremes of an open border and draconian restrictions on international movement. Rather than attempting to discourage immigration through unilateral actions, policy makers should recognize immigration as a natural part of global economic integration and work multilaterally to manage it. International migration should thus be brought under the aegis of broader multilateral agreements regulating trade and investment.

This chapter discusses several policy issues and ways to overcome negotiation obstacles. These include the failure to reach multilateral agreements with respect to climate change finance, intellectual property rights for plant varieties, a multilateral investment agreement, or international trade in environmental goods and services; the proposal to make WTO negotiations less ambitious by abandoning the rule that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’, and abandoning decision-making by consensus; and incentives for mitigation and adaptation measures.

This chapter reviews the principle obligations of multilateral treaties. It first provides an overview on a proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment in Services (MAIS). It then outlines the major obligations contained in the proposed global foreign direct investment (FDI) in services treaty. The MAIS aim to regulate investment in services only. It will not deal with double taxation issues. All forms of intellectual property should be included in the definition of ‘investment’ in the MAIS. In addition, a definition of ‘services’ must be supplied. The MAIS should also state that parties have the right to expropriate foreign investments. It must elaborate that host states are not under any obligation to compensate for inherent disadvantages that foreign investors may suffer. The MAIS would be advantageous, since it would be sector-specific in its focus. Its purpose would also be to liberalise FDI.

This chapter focuses on the bias of interplay management techniques in international law toward status quo preservation and international change. Hypothesis about conflict with international trade rules resulting in the chilling of environmental treaties is examined, along with the use of saving clauses to determine whether certain situations will yield a chilling effect or not. Analysis of the data set reveals acknowledgement of some form of international law by multilateral agreements, which shows that every environmental treaty is not an independent event. Institutional interaction hierarchies and their relationship with the chilling effect are also explored.

US legal scholar, Richard Epstein developed a radical legal doctrine of ‘regulatory takings,’ based on the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, which revolutionised intergovernmental and multilateral investment agreements around the world. First applied to NAFTA, it established a radical precedent that allows corporations legal standing to take governments to independent investment tribunals. As a result, private firms were able to force judgements on nation states guilt of regulatory takings, including substantial damages for lost profits. Unsuccessful attempts were made to include regulatory takings in two international treaties: the Trade Related Investment Measures and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. They were defeated by opposition from development countries and activists. Undeterred, supporters of the principle of regulatory takings had more success including NAFTA-type clauses into bilateral and multilateral investment agreements. These have provided unprecedented protection of foreign investment.

This chapter introduces the four BRIC states, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well as the concept of outward foreign direct investment (FDI). These four BRIC states became the leading global economic factors in the 21st century. They are now symbolic of the modern concept of globalisation. The regulation of outward FDI in services involves a complex interplay of national, regional, and multilateral rules. Outward FDI can decrease the one-sidedness of globalisation. FDI also brings capital, skills, and technology that nations need to prove and sustain competitive industries. The various bilateral and regional agreements that contain provisions regarding the protection of investments are the most vital means of regulating outward FDI. The substance of Multilateral Agreement on Investment in Services (MAIS) highlights the common elements of the BRICs multilateral commitments.

This chapter explores the revisions of and special agreements to the Berne and Paris Conventions. Amongst the multilateral agreements in the international intellectual property (IP) system, these Conventions stand out as those with a long history of more than a hundred years of existence. However, international IP law has since developed outside of the two ‘classic’ conventions. Increasingly, these developments have taken place in different forums, such as trade negotiations, and in new institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This raises the question on how these new instruments relate to the classic treaties. As such, the chapter also analyses the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of International Property Rights (TRIPS) and its relations with the main pre-existing IP treaties.

This chapter provides an overview of egregious cases of corporate environmental damage and the day-to-day negative impacts of the private sector. It then addresses recent initiatives at the international level based on the desirability of the private sector's proactive contribution to the attainment of internationally agreed goals and the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It briefly discusses the role of the private sector in relation to ecosystem services. The chapter aims at providing the pragmatic and ethical justification for the study.

States being the ‘masters of the treaties’, Chapter 8 examines the policy and treaty drafting options available to States if they wish to curb the practice of treaty shopping. Though in particular the negotiation of a single multilateral investment agreement would arguably constitute the most efficient way to eliminate treaty shopping, the current political investment treaty-making climate tends towards bilateralism and regionalism (with an—at best—convergence of certain key features in newer investment treaties), but not true multilateralization. Other options, such as the conclusion of investment treaties without investor–State dispute settlement mechanisms, are possible, but not necessarily desirable. The main remedy to treaty shopping lies therefore in more careful treaty drafting. The chapter examines a large sample of both ‘old-style’ and ‘newer’ investment treaties with the aim of assessing whether and if so how they address the legal problems identified in Chapters 4 to 7.