ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of globalisation on the development of international investment rules through a case study of the role of non-governmental actors in the negotiation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It argues that globalisation has reshaped the interests, ideas and influence of both state and nonstate actors in the development of an international investment regime increasingly in the direction of rules designed to restrain the authority of states over multinational capital. Globalisation has had an impact on the way in which states have redefined their investment interests, as a result of the shifting balance of inward and outward investment, and a perceived loss of state bargaining power vis-à-vis firms (Bartlett and Seleny 1998:322). Despite the enhanced power of increasingly mobile capital, multinational corporations have not had free rein in the writing of investment rules. The process has not gone unchallenged for several reasons. First, it is states which negotiate these rules within interstate organisations where multinational capital still has limited access. Second, a variety of other non-state actors have sought to influence the process, both at the national and the transnational level. This has been part of a process of questioning the impact of globalisation which OECD officials themselves refer to as a ‘backlash’. This chapter argues that, in the case of the MAI, the direct influence of multinational capital in the negotiations has not been successful and that, as the negotiations dragged on, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), opposed to limiting state authority, gained ground. This has occurred largely as a result of intensive NGO lobbying of several OECD members states. In addition globalisation has also facilitated the development of a global network, opposed to these limits on state authority and the MAI, as a result of the development of new technology, such as the Internet.
