The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes: a Multilateral Organization Enhancing a Bilateral Treaty Regime

Masaki Nakamoto for research assistance. Thirty years of negotiation on an international regime on investment have produced very little progress at the multilateral level – GATT’s Uruguay Round resulted in some incorporation of investment measures, but discussions on a Multilateral Agreement on Investment have stalled completely. Over that same time span, however, outright expropriation of foreign investments has all but disappeared, and countries have become more and more willing to sign bilateral investment treaties (BITs). One of the common foundations of those treaties is that investment disputes are referred to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an affiliate of the World Bank. Despite its situation at the heart of the international investment regime, this organization has received very little attention within political science circles. We therefore highlight ICSID’s unique dispute resolution mechanism and present a new dataset of the cases brought before ICSID. We examine the basic patterns of which industries in which states have brought disputes, who is more likely to win the disputes, and which countries are the most likely to be challenged. We then outline a research program that demonstrates ICSID’