Hosted in collaboration with the Department of Sociology, the Research on Global Governance Network (RiGG-Net), and the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE).

Abstract

The Circular Economy package proposed by the incoming Juncker Commission in 2015, and withdrawing an earlier, seemingly more ambitious Action Plan of the previous Commission, is frequently portrayed as a formidable example of policy dismantling and industry co-optation. Yet we have also seen visible and decisive policy action in the form of banning single-use plastics products, with policymakers thus opting for the most stringent instrument (restriction) available in the toolbox of the Circular Economy policy arsenal. In her talk, Sandra Eckert will elaborate on power struggles in the transformative process towards a Circular Economy in the European Union (EU). More specifically, she will examine the role of diffuse and corporate interests in influencing the emerging political agenda seeking to tackle the environmental issues posed by plastics products and waste. She will present key findings discussed in her recently published book on Corporate Power and Regulation. Consumers and the Environment in the European Union (Palgrave 2019).

About the Speaker:
Sandra Eckert is Associate Professor for Politics in the European Multilevel System at Goethe University Frankfurt / Main. She is currently holding a research fellowship at the Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS). During the winter term 2019/2020 she is also invited guest professor at Sciences Po Lyon. Sandra previously held positions at the Universities of Berlin, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Osnabrück and at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence. She received her PhD in political science from Free University Berlin. In her research, Sandra studies issues related to European integration, comparative public policy and international political economy.

For more information, see: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/currentresearch/toxicexpertise/eventsandconferences

Abstract

This seminar will discuss the historical section of my forthcoming book on the rights of foreign investors. This book project is analytical, historical and focuses on the political economy of foreign investment relations. Its aim is not to study individual arbitrations or decide whether certain investment awards are ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ according to a doctrinal, justice or economic rationale. The objective is to examine the ‘inside’ of foreign investor rights, discussing how each investment treaty model, influential piece of scholarship and investment award become building blocks of the rights of foreign investors under international law and investment treaties. In this seminar, I will concentrate on the work that organisations such as the International Chamber of Commerce and the Society to Advance the Protection of Foreign Investment undertook from the late 1940s until the early 1970s. Ideologically close to the neoliberal project, I argue that the primary motivation of these bankers and lawyers was nevertheless pragmatic – business as usual. Their audacious thinking about foreign investor rights allowed them to make some victories on the terrain of law, for instance at the World Bank, which then shaped the background of foreign investment relations. This favourable terrain for foreign investors, however, was contested during this period. I will illustrate this contestation looking not only at the New International Economic Order but also at the more moderate initiatives of the International Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations in the 1970s. From today’s perspective, an important lesson that can be drawn is that the main contribution of these lawyers and bankers to the current international investment regime was not through the neoliberal ideology, which they emphasised or played down depending on the times, but though audacious thinking about transnational law, property and contracts.

A buffet lunch will be served.

About the Speaker:

Nicolás M Perrone is a Research Associate Professor of International Law at Andrés Bello University. His main research interests are in international economic law, particularly in international investment law and policy. He has previously taught at Durham University, the Institute for Global Law and Policy (Harvard Law School) and Universidad Externado de Colombia. Nicolás has worked and consulted for the governments of Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia, the OECD, UNCTAD, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, the International University College of Turin and the University of Eastern Piedmont. Nicolás is a member of the Editorial Committee of the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy (Columbia University - OUP), and his first monograph will be coming out with Oxford University Press next year.

This seminar is organised jointly with the Centre for Human Rights in Practice. Dr Perrone is visiting as an Institute for Advanced Study Residential Fellow as part of The IEL Collective.

This will be the first of a series of three workshops on research methods organised by Q-Step in conjunction with Warwick Law School in the academic year 2019/20. The session will be conducted by Ulf Liebe.

The workshop is open to doctoral students as well.

This is one of a three-workshop training series on research methods for members of the Warwick Law School community, by the Q-Step Centre in conjunction with Warwick Law School. The workshop will be conducted by Florian Reiche. The workshop is also open to doctoral students.

Abstract

The talk will outline the changes over the past half-century in the forms of management of international economic activity, focusing on the role of law. It will outline how the growth of transnational corporations (TNCs) from the 1950s both was facilitated by the postwar international structures (the ‘Bretton Woods’ institutions) and undermined them. This involved a shift from ‘classical’ or ‘embedded’ liberalism, in which states were interdependent, with both economic and social management primarily centred on national governments, loosely coordinated through treaties, to new forms of ‘global governance’. This involved: (i) the rise of the ‘regulatory state’, and (ii) a shift from hierarchy to polyarchy in forms of state and law. In turn, these reflect new forms of power relations, which are multilevel and operate through governance networks, while growing technical specialisation creates a gap between technocratic and political discourse. Law plays a key role, in both managing multilevel interactions, and mediating struggles over legitimacy, which are ultimately about the democratic accountability of these new forms of governance.

This event will be followed by a drinks reception.