Improving Reputation BIT by BIT: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Foreign Accountability

The literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) has paid an increasing interest to international institutions such as bilateral investment treaties (BITs), but whether BITs help attract FDI is an unsettled question. Building on the existing literature, this article argues that BITs can change investors’ perceptions and the corresponding investment they make because signing BITs signals the involvement of another powerful country that is able to compel the host government to comply. This implies that the effect of BITs is not constant across signatory countries: BITs are more effective when they are signed with rich and influential countries. Using monadic and dyadic FDI data, this article finds that BITs signed with powerful countries (defined as the top six largest economies) lead to an increase in FDI inflows (both from these signatory countries and from other countries). BITs signed with other countries, despite in a larger quantity, have little influence on FDI inflows.     

Broadening the Evaluation of Dispute Resolution: Context and Relationships Over Time

Evaluation of negotiation outcomes tends to focus on measurable, dyadic,short-term resolutions of conflict. We review current challenges to this traditionalmodel of the evaluation of dispute resolution outcomes, and we offerfour perspectives that can help address them. First, we advocate the needfor longitudinal studies of negotiations that incorporate disputant relationshipsbefore and after a particular negotiation. Second, we highlight theincreasing importance of third parties in resolving conflict. Third, we suggesta more comprehensive conception of parties, relationships andoutcomes in negotiations research. Finally, we advance an explicit incorporationof context and culture into dispute resolution research models.     

Electronically-Mediated Dispute Resolution and E-Commerce

Although the volume of internet commerce continues to increase, some consumers hesitate to conduct business transactions on the internet because of concerns about the trustworthiness of on-line merchants. The presence of readily available, on-line dispute resolution services can send a reassuring signal to consumers that allays their fears and encourages them to do business on-line. However, on-line dispute resolution systems designed to address disputes arising from e-commerce transactions rely on a communication medium that is impoverished, which can lead to lower trust in the process, and to the escalation of negative emotion and negative attributions about the other participants in the dispute resolution process, making successful resolution of the dispute more difficult. A mediator or arbitrator in an on-line setting who is aware of these potential problems can try to avert them by engaging in simple rapport-building procedures. However, facilitating acceptance of on-line dispute resolution decisions may be more difficult than in a traditional face-to-face environment because of the absence of cues that communicate the trustworthiness and neutrality of the third party, as well as acknowledgment of the societal standing of the disputant.     

Deeper Commitment to Human Rights Treaties: Signaling and Investment Risk Perception

Why do some leaders make deeper commitments to human rights treaties (HRAs) by consenting to receive extra monitoring of complaints or communications from individual citizens? Extant theory suggests leaders join HRAs for tangible benefits. However, empirical support for this argument is mixed. To address this mismatch, we approach this question from a different angle. We argue that by ratifying HRAs, leaders send a signal that they are reliable partners who value future returns. Accepting optional articles and protocols that increase monitoring of the state’s human rights behavior, without changing the state’s substantive obligations, helps better signal that the regime does not fear instability nor sees the need to resort to the proscribed abuses in the future. This, in turn, serves as an important middle step to recognizing tangible benefits, such as foreign direct investment, by improving investors’ risk perception of ratified countries.     

Inside a News Item: A Dispute Over Framing

Trust in serious journalism is based on our belief in the professionalism of journalistic practice. We expect televisions evening news to select the most significant events of the day and tell them in a fair and accurate manner. Whereas academic research agrees that news value or newsworthiness should be the guiding principle for selectivity, the principle is rarely spelled out in detail. Occasional attempts to infer these values empirically from what gets published or from whats left on the floor conceal the process of negotiation and disagreement that goes on in the newsroom and between professional journalists and the interests of the channels private or public owners. The case study presented here uses inside information that emerged during the course of a public debate following the broadcasting of a news item on Israels Public Television featuring football fans at a victory celebration welcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu with racist shouts. The analysis demonstrates that the same event may evoke several competing frames and thus may be included or dropped, or appear at various spots in the lineup for different reasons. The paper raises the question of whether the authority of the news might not be enhanced on occasion by sharing competing frames with viewers.     

Compensation Schemes and Dispute Resolution Mechanisms: Beyond the Obvious

Because compensation and dispute resolution lie at the core of most resettlement proposals, this panel had two main objectives: to get an accurate grasp of the current Israeli approach to these challenges and to glean insights from relevant experiences in other settings. Before reading our panelists' presentations, one might be forgiven for reasonably thinking that "compensation equals cash" and "dispute resolution equals court." As our panelists discussed, however, such a straightforward view is simply inadequate to the needs of the resettlement problem — a much richer view of compensation and dispute resolution is required.     

Dispute Resolution and the Politics of Cultural Generalization

This essay argues that generalizations about cultural identities and values should play a key role in designing procedures to resolve disputes. Generalizations about cultures are risky given the complexity of memberships and group boundaries, not to mention the power dynamics within and between social groups. But it is important to take the risk: attempts to avoid or transcend culture in resolving disputes pose and even greater, or reiterating the understandings of dominant cultural groups under the guise of neutrality. The author explores the "politics of cultural generalization" in theoretical terms, then considers its implications for concrete elements of dispute resolution training and process design.     

中国—东盟自由贸易区国际投资条约的冲突与协调

在中国—东盟自由贸易区内存在多层级的国际投资条约的适用问题。有的投资条约侧重投资自由化,有的注重对投资的保护,强调投资保护和强调投资自由化之间存在着潜在的冲突。这些条约的缔约国在履行双重条约义务时就难免会发生冲突。就条约具体条款而言,存在实体性规则的冲突和程序性规则的冲突。对于条约冲突的解决可以运用动态的条约解释方法和条约自身的冲突条款予以解决。但条约冲突是一个复杂问题,没有一个简单的方法就可以解决所有冲突,我们只能减少条约的冲突而不能消除所有冲突。     

No Sheriff in Town: Governance for Online Dispute Resolution

Online dispute resolution (ODR), the practice of resolving disputes via the Internet or digital applications, has been developing since the mid‐1990s. As the field has grown and gained traction, it has increasingly received attention from professional associations and industry leaders in the world of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). More recently, it has begun to receive recognition from sources outside of this field — in both the public and private sectors. As the field develops and individual initiatives become widely adopted, the attention it receives from external sources will undoubtedly focus on questions of quality, ethics, practitioner training, service provider qualifications, and monitoring. These questions — already beginning to be heard from within the field — derive, in essence, from one shared overall question, that of appropriate governance for the ODR field. In this article, we will explain what we mean when we discuss a field's governance and suggest that the field itself should investigate issues of its own governance. We explore and explain the current “low‐to‐no” state of governance in ODR — and the developments that are likely, should the field fail to actively address this issue. We discuss the costs of no governance, and the potential costs and disadvantages of employing a higher‐governance model. We ask whether ODR can, indeed, be governed at all, and illustrate why addressing ODR governance is a very complex venture, in terms of the web of factors to be addressed, no matter how beneficial internal governance may be. We do not, in this article, intend to decide any of these questions — but, rather, to pose them to the ODR field and to the wider fields of ADR and conflict management. We point out why the ODR field is at a developmental point that is highly suitable for discussing and deciding these questions — and why these decisions might have far‐reaching implications for a wide range of conflict‐related fields.     

Defining Success in Negotiation and Other Dispute Resolution Training

This article describes three types of negotiation courses and asks what range of goals is usually achieved in such courses from the overlapping perspectives of organizers, teachers, and participants. It then translates Benjamin Bloom's categories of educational goals into aspirational goals for any negotiation course.     

Integrating the Undergraduate Experience: A Course on Environmental Dispute Resolution

This paper describes a rigorous undergraduate course on environmental dispute resolution. Students get hands-on experience in negotiation cases, developing skills and building theoretical understanding through a series of exercises. With this foundation, the students advance to an extended role-playing case study on oil exploration in the Ecuadorian rain forest. The course provides an integration function both in terms of understanding environmental issues, but also in modeling reality, encouraging action, and building process tools that are essential in addressing environmental and social challenges facing the planet.     

Online Dispute Resolution: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Negotiation Journal - Will we ever see the day when the Internet serves as the primary venue for problem solving and dispute resolution? Social science research suggests that our online...     

Sovereignty,Bargaining, and the International Regulation of Foreign Direct Investment

While developing countries have undergone a remarkable transformation in their attitudes toward foreign direct investment (FDI) during the past decade, they still resist the establishment of a multilateral regime governing FDI. This is puzzling, first, because these states are liberalising their policies anyway, and second, because a multilateral regime offers several advantages over the patchwork of unilateral and bilateral arrangements that currently exist (for instance, by contributing to increasing FDI flows). What explains this paradoxical attitude? This paper critically examines a number of potential explanations. Concerns about losing sovereignty, lack of knowledge about the costs of FDI restrictions, or lingering suspicions of multinational corporations may play some role, but cannot account for unilateral and bilateral liberalisation. Another approach highlights the role of domestic groups in supporting or opposing a multilateral agreement. Yet the pattern of variation among the attitudes of developing countries casts doubt on this explanation as well. Finally, the paper puts forth an argument that focuses on how bargaining power affects the trade-off between economic gains and the loss of sovereignty. The host state's perceived attractiveness to multinational investors conditions whether or not the government resolves this trade-off in favour of supporting a multilateral regime.     

Designing Ethical Online Dispute Resolution Systems: The Rise of the Fourth Party

As the pandemic forces public and private institutions to move online, many court and business leaders are looking to the field of online dispute resolution (ODR) for best practices and lessons learned. Developed over the last twenty years, largely in response to the growth of e‐commerce, the ODR field has generated a deep well of theory and practice while also identifying potential ethical dilemmas and risks. The application of technology, the “fourth party,” plays an increasingly integral role in how we negotiate resolutions to our disputes, with or without a third party. A brief overview of the history of ODR’s development will set the context for the exploration of the range of tools and techniques encompassed by online dispute resolution. Consideration of the ethical challenges raised by ODR practice will illuminate key questions and choices that need to be made in designing ODR systems and in governing their use.