The Environment and the Principle of Non-discrimination in Investment Regimes: International and Domestic Institutions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Dimant ◽  
Tim Krieger ◽  
Daniel Meierrieks

Author(s):  
Samantha Besson

As a companion to the five regional reports in this volume, this chapter’s aim is a double one: first, to bring the comparison up to the regional level, and second, to analyse the international and domestic institutions, procedures, and mechanisms that affect how international human rights instruments influence domestic law. The chapter is therefore both a study in comparative international human rights law and a contribution to its methodology. Its structure is four-pronged. The first section clarifies the aim, object, and method of the comparison. The second section presents a comparative assessment of the Covenants’ domestic influence across regions and develops a grid of comparative analysis. The third section addresses the authority of the Committees’ interpretations of the Covenants, relying on a bottom-up comparative law argument. The fourth section discusses the role of human rights comparison and of regional human rights law in enhancing the legitimacy of the Committees’ future interpretations.


Author(s):  
Pavlos Eleftheriadis

This book offers a legal and political theory of the European Union. Many political and legal philosophers compare the EU to a federal union. They believe that its basic laws should be subject to the standards of constitutional law. They thus find it lacking or incomplete. This book offers a rival theory. If one looks more closely at the treaties and the precedents of the European courts, one sees that the substance of EU law is international, not constitutional. Just like international law, it applies primarily to the relations between states. It binds domestic institutions directly only when the local constitutions allow it. The member states have democratically chosen to adapt their constitutional arrangements in order to share legislative and executive powers with their partners. The legal architecture of the European Union is thus best understood under a theory of dualism and not pluralism. According to this internationalist view, EU law is part of the law of nations and its distinction from domestic law is a matter of substance, not form. This arrangement is supported by a cosmopolitan theory of international justice, which we may call progressive internationalism. The EU is a union of democratic peoples, that freely organize their interdependence on the basis of principles of equality and reciprocity. Its central principles are not the principles of a constitution, but cosmopolitan principles of accountability, liberty, and fairness,


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Welch

Why do states give institutions the ability to legally punish them? While past research focuses on international pressure to delegate authority to third parties, I argue that domestic politics plays a key role. By viewing domestic politics through a principal–agent framework, I argue that the more accountable individual legislators remain to the public, the more likely it is that the legislature will delegate legal punishment authority. I focus on National Human Rights Institutions—domestic institutions tasked with protection and promotion of human rights—to build the argument. Electoral institutions that decrease monitoring of legislator agents, or institutional makeup that allows the executive to displace the public as the principal lead to National Human Rights Institutions without punishment power. Using Bayesian logistic analyses I test four hypotheses, all of which are in agreement with the argument.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110153
Author(s):  
Chris Armstrong

According to one prominent theory of development, a country’s wealth is primarily explained by the quality of its institutions. Leaning on that view, several political theorists have defended two normative conclusions. The first is that we have no reason for concern, from the point of view of justice, if some countries have greater natural resource endowments than others. The second is that proposals for redistribution across borders are likely to be superfluous. Advocates of global redistribution have not yet grappled with these momentous arguments, or shown whether, and how, they might be rebuffed. This article does just that.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Nils-Christian Bormann ◽  
Yannick I. Pengl ◽  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Nils B. Weidmann

Abstract Recent research has shown that inequality between ethnic groups is strongly driven by politics, where powerful groups and elites channel the state's resources toward their constituencies. Most of the existing literature assumes that these politically induced inequalities are static and rarely change over time. We challenge this claim and argue that economic globalization and domestic institutions interact in shaping inequality between groups. In weakly institutionalized states, gains from trade primarily accrue to political insiders and their co-ethnics. By contrast, politically excluded groups gain ground where a capable and meritocratic state apparatus governs trade liberalization. Using nighttime luminosity data from 1992 to 2012 and a global sample of ethnic groups, we show that the gap between politically marginalized groups and their included counterparts has narrowed over time while economic globalization progressed at a steady pace. Our quantitative analysis and four qualitative case narratives show, however, that increasing trade openness is associated with economic gains accruing to excluded groups in only institutionally strong states, as predicted by our theoretical argument. In contrast, the economic gap between ethnopolitical insiders and outsiders remains constant or even widens in weakly institutionalized countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-146
Author(s):  
Mark L. Haas

Abstract Why is it that international ideological enemies—states governed by leaders engaged in deep disputes about preferred domestic institutions and values—are sometimes able to overcome their ideological differences and ally to counter shared threats, and sometimes they are not? Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe are unlike coalitions among ideologically similar states facing comparable threats. Members of these alliances are perpetually torn by two sets of powerful contending forces. Shared material threats push these states together, while the effects of ideological differences pull them apart. To predict when ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally in the pursuit of common interests, it is necessary to know which of these contending forces is likely to dominate at a particular time. The values of two ideological variables beyond that of ideological enmity play the key role in determining outcomes: (1) states’ susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes and (2) the nature of the ideological differences among countries. Similar levels of ideological enmity and material threats will have vastly different effects on leaders’ alliance policies as the values of these additional ideological variables alter.


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