International Investment Law as Development: The Ideological Constraint of the Grand Bargain

This thesis analyses the constraining influence the ‘Grand Bargain’ has on developing states’ engagement with the regime of International Investment Law (IIL). The grand bargain is a narrative presumed by many actors in the regime that posits that, if developing states commit to the norms and operations of IIL, they will enjoy the developmental benefits of further foreign direct investment within their borders. I argue that this narrative constrains developing states’ engagement with IIL and the global political economy more broadly by entrenching both the practices and conceptual framework of globalised capitalism. By entrenching the practices and conceptual framework of globalised capitalism, IIL facilitates and reproduces the exploitation and inequality evident between the transnational capitalist class and developing states. I analyse the grand bargain’s impact on three of IIL’s core concepts and their corresponding areas of practice using a methodology of ideology critique I label the ideological process: development and the definition of investment in arbitration, sovereignty and the jurisprudence of indirect expropriation, and consent and the umbrella clause’s elevation of contractual breaches to the level of treaty.