Bureaucratic Capacity and Preference Attainment in International Economic Negotiations. Negotiating BITs with Models
40 Pages Posted: 14 Oct 2016 Last revised: 4 May 2021
Date Written: October 12, 2016
Abstract
What determines states' ability to influence the contents of international agreements to which they become party? The existing empirical literature on international economic negotiations use models of strategic competition to explain negotiated outcomes, persistently highlighting the importance of political, economic, and military sources of power. We argue that states' bureaucratic capacity is an underestimated source of negotiating power, and develop a theory of two modes through which states' bureaucratic capacity can influence negotiated outcomes in bilateral investment treaty negotiations. We then test our theory on a sample of 810 investment treaty negotiations. To measure preference attainment, we compare a unique repository of model investment treaties with finalized investment treaty texts. Our analysis indicates that having higher bureaucratic capacity than one's negotiating counterpart is associated with higher preference attainment in investment negotiations. Our findings have important implications for state policy-makers engaged in investment policy reform and treaty (re)negotiations.
Keywords: international investment law, bilateral investment treaties, negotiations, preferences, power, expertise
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