The New Gold Standard? Empirically Situating the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Investment Treaty Universe

Alschner, Wolfgang; Skougarevskiy, Dmitriy (2016). The New Gold Standard? Empirically Situating the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Investment Treaty Universe. Journal of world investment & trade, 17(3), pp. 339-373. Brill 10.1163/22119000-01703001

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been labeled a ‘new, high-standard trade agreement’. But just how ‘new’ and ‘high’ are the standards it sets? To answer that question we combine traditional legal analysis with computational text comparisons situating the TPP in the universe of international investment agreements (IIAs). We find that the TPP investment chapter offers few truly novel features — 81% of its text is taken from prior American treaties. Compared to the majority of IIAs, however, the TPP goes beyond existing practice: it sets high levels of investment protection, explicitly safeguards host state sovereignty and establishes a sophisticated investment arbitration architecture. Nevertheless, the TPP is unlikely to revolutionize the IIA universe. Its innovations are open to circumvention given that older treaties remain in force parallel to the TPP. Moreover, as disagreement persists with Europe and BRICS countries, the TPP is unlikely to serve as a template for future multilateralization.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

02 Faculty of Law > Department of Economic Law > World Trade Institute
10 Strategic Research Centers > World Trade Institute

02 Faculty of Law > Department of Economic Law > NCCR International Trade Regulation

UniBE Contributor:

Alschner, Wolfgang

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 320 Political science
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 340 Law

ISSN:

1660-7112

Publisher:

Brill

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pablo Rahul Das

Date Deposited:

29 Nov 2016 12:05

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:59

Publisher DOI:

10.1163/22119000-01703001

Related URLs:

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/90441

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