CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

ONDŘEJ SVOBODA CYIL 14 (2023) Panagiotis Delimatsis, Georgios Dimitropoulos, Anastasios Gourgourinis (eds.) State Capitalism and International Investment Law Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023, 343 pp., ISBN 9781509962990 [Státní kapitalismus a mezinárodní investiční právo] Recently, we have witnessed a shift in the emphasis of the global economy, the new role of developing countries, and a reconsideration of the role of the state in the economy, underpinned further by the COVID-19 pandemic. If the 1980s and 1990s were periods of retrenchment of state capitalism, 1 the economic model rose to prominence again in connection to the rise of China as the world’s second-largest economy, leading manufacturer, and exporter. However, international law frequently struggles to find answers to state capitalism and there is the lack of its international regulation of state capitalism and a variety of related new organizational forms, typically sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or pension funds. For instance, international trade law lacks tools on how to cope with expanding state capitalism in the multilateral trade system. The most visible case is the existing WTO rules as there is a growing perception that WTO law is neither conceptually coherent nor practically effective in tackling various forms of economic policies and their vehicles like China´s state capitalism and its SOEs. Accordingly, a similar question arises about the relation between international investment law and state capitalism, and more specifically about sovereign investors such as SOEs and SWFs. The editors of the book under review Panagiotis Delimatsis, Georgios Dimitropoulos and Anastasios Gourgourinis thus decided to make a topical contribution to the existing literature on international investment law. This book brings together more than 15 experts from different countries and legal traditions to provide the reader with a comprehensive and thoughtful understanding of the breadth of the new dimension of international investment law. To achieve this goal, the authors employ various methodology, including critical state theory, power transitions theory, and political economy, which bring fresh and innovative perspectives. Chapters cover a wide range of issues, focusing particularly on actors and processes of state capitalism, its implications on the international economic order, adjudication of state capitalism and its contextualizing in the global governance and the climate change. Through the book, it is certain that state capitalism is here to stay, and China is the leading driver. This is also reflected by the content of the volume which is more (chapters Chinese State Capitalism in the World Order: An International Law and International Relations Perspective by Jiangyu and State Capitalism and Global Governance under the Belt and Road Initiative by Qingxiu Bu) or less ( The Relevance of the Green Swan Risks: Accounting for Climate Change in the Legal Framework of Sovereign Investors by Bianca Nalbandian) explicitly focused on China.

1 Which can be defined as an economic system in which the state uses various tools for proactive intervention in economic production and the functioning of markets. Mike Wright, Geoffrey Wood, Aldo Musacchio, Ilya Okhmatovskiy, Anna Grosman, Jonathan P. Doh. State capitalism in international context: Varieties and variations. Journal of World Business , Vol. 56, No. 2, 2021, p. 2.

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