Does research about investment arbitration change investment arbitration? Who controls the knowledge about and the realities of this institution?
This project first aims at an understanding of the structures of knowledge production about investment arbitration. Based on the idea that our interests and aesthetic prefigurations shape our epistemology, and that legal realities are social constructs, it seeks to canvass the interests and other aesthetic prefigurations of the individuals and institutions producing this knowledge. Put differently, it asks what people who write about investment arbitration likely try to achieve with it, given who they are and what they otherwise do. The project then moves on to examine how this knowledge shapes the institution and our representation of it, how it actually works and the understanding we have of how it works. On this tack, it conducts a meta-analysis of empirical studies about the socio-economic effects of investment arbitration, and analyses how the findings of these studies could and do feed back into the understanding of this institution, how they clash with the key knowledge producers’ interests and aesthetic prefigurations, and how they lead to mensurable change.
Related publications:
- Cédric Dupont, Thomas Schultz, Merih Angin, “Double Jeopardy? The Use of Investment Arbitration in Times of Crisis”, in D. Behn, O.K. Fauchald, and M. Langford (eds), The Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: Empirical Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 2022, 365-393 - external link
- Cédric Dupont, Thomas Schultz, Jason Yackee, “Investment Arbitration and Political Systems Theory”, in T. Schultz and F. Ortino (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration, Oxford University Press, 2020. - external link
- Cédric Dupont, Thomas Schultz, Merih Angin, in D. Behn, O.K. Fauchald, and M. Langford (eds), The Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: Empirical Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Thomas Schultz, Niccolò Ridi, “Arbitration Litterature”, in T. Schultz and F. Ortino (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration, Oxford University Press, 2020. - external link