International Economic Law Crisis and Developing Countries

The presented paper examines the position of developing countries in the current crisis of international economic law (IEL). It argues that the relevant choice is not between reviving an ambitious New International Economic Order, accepting the neoliberal project, or accommodating the increasingly coercive geoeconomic practices of powerful states. Instead, the paper advances a more modest but politically realistic strategy: a “passion for the possible”. Through a historical reconstruction of IEL, the paper develops a framework for “rule-takers” based on a distinction between IEL as a project and IEL as part of the broader economic system. To increase their influence over IEL as a project, developing economies should identify tensions and contradictions in universalizing claims, especially win-win narratives, while bringing issues and actors left in the background into policy and academic debates. To advance their economic interests, they should focus on specific areas of shared concern, targeted coalitions, and agenda-setting capacity. The project and system efforts should not be collapsed into broader initiatives, as developing countries may have common goals or visions about the international economic order but different and even competing economic interests.

About the speaker

Nicolás M. Perrone is Professor of Economic Law and Director of the Center for Law, Regulation and Sustainable Economics, Universidad de Valparaíso (Chile). He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal, CUP. His main research interests are in sustainable development and international economic law, particularly in international investment law and policy. Nicolás has worked and consulted for the governments of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, the OECD, UNCTAD, APEC, South Centre, the International Institute for Environment and Development, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Climate Action Network, and the Fairtrade Foundation. He is the author of "Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination: How foreign investors play by their own rules", published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

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