民粹主义、国家监管空间与国际投资协定再谈判

Populism,State Regulatory Space and Renegotiation of International Investment Agreements

国际投资协定签订的初衷和核心在于缔约国“自缚手脚”地失去一定的政策自主权以保护外国投资。近年来国际投资治理体系朝着适度扩大东道国监管空间的方向改革,但尚欠缺对背后驱动因素的系统性解释。作者关注民粹主义对国际投资政策的影响,认为民粹主义程度较高的政府因其“反精英”的意识形态核心具有扩大国际投资协定中国家监管空间的倾向。通过对1986-2017年247个重新谈判(包括终止)的国际投资协定进行实证分析,在控制其他影响因素后,可以发现国际投资协定中国家监管空间的变化与其国内民粹主义程度存在显著的正相关关系。这一结果在经过进一步删选样本、转换因变量和改变估计模型以及更换核心自变量的计算方式和衡量方式等稳健性检验后依然成立。交互效应检验进一步证明,外商直接投资规模扩大、国家治理能力提升、国际投资仲裁经历与民粹主义倾向对于国际投资协定中扩大国家监管空间的影响存在替代效应,缔约国税收的增加则会加强民粹主义倾向的影响。通过补充国际投资规则扩大东道国监管空间的驱动因素以及民粹主义的政策影响这两支文献的研究内容,作者揭示了推动全球投资制度演变背后的政治环境,有助于更好地平衡投资者权利和国家政策自主权。

The original intention of signing International Investment Agreements is that the contracting parties are“bound hand and foot”and lose a certain degree of policy autonomy to protect foreign investment.In recent years,the international investment governance system has been reformed in the direction of moderately expanding the regulatory space of the host countries,but there is still a lack of systematic evidence to explain the driving factors behind it.The authors pay attention to the impacts of populism on international investment policies,and advocate that governments with stronger populism have a tendency to expand the regulatory space in international investment agreements because of their“anti-elite”ideological core.Through an empirical analysis of 247 renegotiated(including terminated)international investment agreements from 1986 to 2017,after controlling other influencing factors,this paper finds that the correlation between the changes in national regulatory space in international investment agreements and the degree of domestic populism are indeed significantly positive.This result is still valid after further robustness tests such as deleting and selecting samples,converting dependent variables,changing the estimation model,and replacing the calculation and measurement methods of core independent variables.The cross-effect tests further prove that the expansion of foreign direct investment,the improvement of national governance capabilities,the experience of international investment arbitration,and the populist tendency have a substitution effect on the expansion of the national regulatory space in the international investment agreement.The increase in the taxation of the contracting states will strengthen the populist tendency.By supplementing the researches on the driving factors to expand the host country’s regulatory space in international investment agreements,and the influence of populism,the authors reveal the political environment behind the evolution of the global investment system.