Symposium on International Investment Law & Contemporary Crises – Part 8 of 8
Beyond Empire: Global Economic Governance and Investor–State Dispute Settlement in the Banking and Finance Sector

Does investor-State arbitration in the banking and finance sector reproduce historical patterns of economic hierarchy—or has the system evolved beyond them?

In this afternoon’s and our final contribution to our symposium, Güneş Ünüvar (University of Luxembourg) situates the BIICL (British Institute of International and Comparative Law) empirical study within one of the most enduring critiques of ISDS: the neocolonial critique of global economic governance.

The data reveals familiar patterns—investors from a small group of capital-exporting States account for more than half of claims, while respondent States often include those facing acute financial crisis.

But the picture is more complex than a simple North-South binary.

The piece explores:

- How crisis-driven financial measures—sovereign debt restructuring, currency controls, bank resolutions—become internationally justiciable
- Whether arbitral scrutiny of macroeconomic policy risks regulatory chill
- The human cost of crisis-linked disputes, often invisible in arbitral proceedings
- The evolving, polycentric nature of global capital and treaty claims

Importantly, the empirical record shows that States do prevail in a significant number of emergency intervention cases. Yet the structural critique remains: the system renders core economic sovereignty subject to transnational legal review.

The concluding question is not whether ISDS is simply “for” or “against” States—but whether global economic governance can protect investment without penalising vulnerability.

Read the full contribution here: https://lnkd.in/efCNSSRN