Mapping Change in Renegotiated Investment Agreements

The governance of international investment is undergoing significant change. This change is driven largely by governments’ experiences with investor-state arbitration and a desire to recalibrate investment policies to balance the rights of investors with the regulatory space of host governments. We investigate this process by looking at the practice of renegotiation of bilateral investment treaties (BITs). We ask whether and how changes in investment policy and discourse produce changes at the level of international governance, as manifested in international agreements. To address these questions, the paper presents a new dataset on BIT design that seeks to capture the degree of regulatory space available to host governments, as reflected in both substantive rules and procedural mechanisms. To identify changes in design, we compare original BITs with their renegotiated counterparts and we also look at the evolution of BIT design more generally. We find significant areas of continuity but also important examples of change, especially in the area of dispute settlement procedures.