The International Investment Regime After the Global Crisis of Neoliberalism: Rupture or Continuity?

Abstract

This article aims to show that the tools being used to recalibrate the \ninternational investment regime, in particular proportionality and corporate \nsocial responsibility, constitute continuity rather than rupture with \nneoliberalism and neoliberal legality. Neoliberalism has been discredited, and \nfew actors suggest a return to self-regulation after the 2008 global economic \ncrisis. This call for regulation, however, finds international economic law \nscholarship divided between those who claim that standards of review and \ncorporate social responsibility can solve the crisis of neoliberalism, and those \nwho believe that the problem is more profound. In the case of the international \ninvestment regime, this article suggests that the current strategy to balance this \nregime consists only of marginal adjustments to state’s regulatory authority, \nleaving intact the legal techniques that foreign investors use to control local \nresources. The contractualization of foreign investment relations remains today \nas important as it was during the neoliberal era. In this way, this article \nconcludes that the current balancing strategy marginally changes the means \nand does not change the purpose provided by neoliberalism.

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