Tax Treaties and Enterprise Outcomes: Evidence Across Developing African Countries

Studies have noted the possibility of tax treaties constraining the tax policy autonomy of developing countries, while their impact on enterprise development within host economies remains an empirical issue. This study examines the effects and heterogeneous differences in estimated effects of tax treaties on small businesses in developing countries that agree to these agreements. The study uses the ICTD tax treaties dataset and the World Bank Enterprise Survey data to set up a quasi-experiment framework for selected African Countries. The framework compares countries’ outcomes for small businesses that ratify and enforce a tax treaty and those without a ratified tax treaty for the years pre-2005–2010 and post-2011–2019). We find that tax treaties signed and enforced by developing countries in Africa have a consistent, negative relationship with small business outcomes. These results are driven by the enterprise’s size and internationalisation status but not by the subsidiary status of the sampled small businesses. The findings have implications for policy targeted towards industrial development alongside tax treaty negotiations.

The limits of information revelation in multilateral negotiations: A theory of treatymaking

States negotiate over the specific terms of multilateral treaties because those terms determine states’ willingness to ratify the treaty. In some cases, a state might decline to ratify a treaty it otherwise supports because specific terms are too far from those it prefers. States and inter-governmental organizations negotiating treaties would like to uncover the minimal terms needed to secure the ratification of key states, but under what circumstances will those states candidly reveal those terms? Using a spatial representation of the issues in a treaty negotiation, we use mechanism design to determine what information states will reveal in a treaty negotiation. We find that states are willing to reveal how they would like tradeoffs between different issues to be resolved but not the minimal terms they require for ratification. Further, negotiations cannot always separate types that need concessions to ratify from other types that would like concessions but would ratify the treaty even if they do not receive them. These findings provide insight into how treaty negotiations can succeed or fail, and they lay the theoretical groundwork for a new line of empirical research on how multilateral treaties are negotiated.

Interview with Janez Lenarčič

Janez Lenarčič is currently serving as Commissioner for Crisis Management in the European Commission, a mandate he took up in December 2019. In this capacity, he is responsible for EU civil protection as well as humanitarian aid. Mr Lenarčič served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Slovenia to the European Union (EU) in Brussels from 2016 to 2019. From 2014 to 2016, he held the Secretary of State position in the cabinet of the Slovenian Prime Minister. His previous experience also includes the position of Director of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, in Warsaw, from 2008 to 2014. He has also served as Secretary of State for European Affairs, including representing Slovenia during the Lisbon Treaty negotiations in 2007 and later representing the Slovenian EU Council Presidency to the European Parliament in 2008. In 2002 and 2003 he held the position of State Secretary in the cabinet of the Slovenian Prime Minister, after which he served as Slovenian Ambassador to the OSCE. In 2005, he was also Chairman of the Permanent Council of the OSCE in Vienna. In 2000 he served as Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the following year he became the Diplomatic Adviser to the then Slovenian Prime Minister. Between 1994 and 1999 he was posted to Slovenia's Permanent Representation to the United Nations (UN) in New York, where he also served as the alternate representative of Slovenia on the UN Security Council. Mr Lenarčič holds a degree in international law from Ljubljana University.

Disabled People’s Fight for Rights in South Korea and Japan

Long considered objects of pity and welfare assistance, people with disabilities in South Korea and Japan are increasingly treated as rights-bearers. Through activism, litigation, and involvement in international treaty negotiations, Koreans and Japanese with disabilities spurred reforms that created new anti-discrimination protections and obligations to provide reasonable accommodations, access, employment, and social supports. These policy changes also signal a notably more legalistic approach to governance, particularly in South Korea, because they include more detailed rules and formal rights, more enforcement mechanisms like fines, and better recourse to judicial or other dispute resolution bodies.

Treaties and re-setting the colonial relationship: Lessons for Australia from the Treaty of Waitangi

Colonial hegemony distinguishes relationships between the Australian state and Indigenous nations. British government was violently established and there was no accommodation with the Indigenous populations to allow settlement to proceed, as occurred through treaties in Canada and New Zealand. Indigenous arguments for treaties in Australia are, however, well established. Notwithstanding some Commonwealth and state and territory governments considering such agreements over the past 40 years, none have been concluded, and more modest forms of recognition have been alternatively proposed. In 2015, following extensive Indigenous advocacy, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition appointed a Referendum Council to consult on an amendment to the Commonwealth Constitution to recognise Australia’s first peoples. The recommendation of a Voice to Parliament and a Makarrata Commission to oversee truth telling and agreements to allow ‘coming together after a struggle’ suggested a transformative ambition beyond the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition’s expectations. Makarrata does not stipulate treaties as an ideal form of agreement, but in raising the possibility, the Council added to the concept’s political momentum. This article discusses the place of treaties in contemporary Australian discourse, including treaty negotiations that are in progress in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. It uses examples from New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi to discuss their possibilities and limits in Australia. From these examples, two overarching arguments are made. Firstly, that treaties are potentially transformative, not because they may settle historical grievances, but because their required mutual recognition of each party’s enduring political standing means that they define ongoing, just terms of association. Secondly, the substantively different political arrangements that they presume mean that they are not merely instruments of egalitarian justice and are instead concerned with the distribution of political authority – Indigenous authority over their affairs and through a distinctive and culturally contextualised state citizenship.

Housing, crises and crime

A disappointment of responses to the Covid-19 crisis is that governments have not invested massively in public housing. Global crises are opportunities for macro resets of policy settings that might deliver lower crime and better justice. Justice Reinvestment is important, but far from enough, as investment beyond the levels of capital sunk into criminal justice is required to establish a just society. Neoliberal policies have produced steep declines in public and social housing stock. This matters because many rehabilitation programmes only work when clients have secure housing. Getting housing policies right is also fundamental because we know the combined effect on crime of being truly disadvantaged, and living in a deeply disadvantaged neighbourhood, is not additive, but multiplicative. A Treaty with First Nations Australians is unlikely to return the stolen land on which white mansions stand. Are there other options for Treaty negotiations? Excellence and generosity in social housing policies might open some paths to partial healing for genocide and ecocide.

8 Investment Promotion, Facilitation, Admission, and Establishment

This chapter assesses investment promotion, facilitation, admission, and establishment. International law recognizes that by virtue of its sovereignty a state has the right to control the entry and exit of persons and things into and from its territory and also to regulate the activities of nationals or foreign persons and companies within that territory. A corollary of that principle is that a state is not required to allow foreign nationals or companies to establish or acquire an enterprise or investment within its territory. With respect to foreign investment, states have complete legislative jurisdiction to determine to what extent foreign nationals and companies may undertake investments, which sectors and industries they may or may not enter, and whether or not they must fulfil additional conditions in order to undertake and operate an investment within state territory. Numerous factors have shaped individual countries' attitudes towards foreign investment and investment treaty negotiations. One of the traditional aims of the investment treaty movement has been to reduce these internal barriers to foreign investment, particularly through treaty provisions on investment promotion, admission, and establishment. The second decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a growing emphasis in both international discussions and a few treaties on a new concept: foreign investment facilitation.