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Investment issues remain one of the most undeveloped parts of global trade governance. WTO limits it action to TRIMs making it in a 30-year-old lag on a topic of growing salience. This situation seems undesirable as capital flux remains the core features of globalisation. Investment regulation has tended to be set through bilateral framework with state remaining the salient unit of analysis for years. Interestingly, new actors, such as regional forum, arise in investment agreement negotiation that exceeds the scope of TRIMs. The best example might be the leadership of European Union (EU) to lead the negotiation for TTIP, CETA and CAI. Academic literature reflected on the way this new actorness should be conceptualised, its impact on global governance and meanings in terms of power diffusion. In so doing, it has overlooked to consider that EU involvement in investment regulation might be part of broader scheme led by globalisation transformative effect. This article aims to reconsider the way EU gain salience in those negotiations. In a nutshell, instead of placing EU empowerment as a cause of power diffusion, the paper consider it as a consequence of world politics fragmentation.
This article build on latest development of International Political Economy to emphasise the growing complexity of global investment governance. Indeed, the retreat of state as recently been captured through the concept of Heterarchy - the predominance of cross-cutting sectoral mini- and meso- hierarchies above, below and cutting across states (Cerny, 2022). Therefore, the EU might be considered as a transmission belt bringing those hierarchies to the upper sphere of decision-making. With this in minds, either private or public interest would prefer EU framework to access global governance than state-centric one. Leading us to reflect on the way EU gain salience in investment agreement rather than the impact of such a dynamic. In other words, this research aims to answer: does heterarchy favour the empowerment of regional settings?
To address such an issue, the proposal relies on a bold methodological framework. Data collection encompasse 20 interviews with Brussels based decision makers, lobbies and interest groups. Those data would be treated through content analysis relying on CAQDAS and completed with desk research. In the end, this paper as a twofold objective; on the one hand, it seeks to deepen regionalism research field by integrating a new theoretical perspective based on the concept of Heterarchy. On the other hand, it should deliver new empirical findings to acknowledge Heterarchy concept potential. Indeed, while Heterarchy propose an innovative theoretical perspective it still lacks a clear application to spot its novelty in understanding the complex decision-making system. From an empirical standpoint, this research might uncover new features of EU leadership in terms investment governance.
