Do countries fail to raise environmental standards? An evaluation of policy options addressing ''regulatory chill''

Neumayer, Eric

doi:10.1504/ijsd.2001.004446

Cited by 19 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…IIAs are not the only international economic agreements associated with regulatory chill. Agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have also been investigated as potential sources of regulatory chill within public policy (Bennett, ; Chambers, ; Dong et al., 2012; Mulatu et al., ; Neumayer, ) Although these framings are not entirely consistent with the conceptualisation of regulatory chill being advanced in this paper, as they lack consideration of the types of investor rights and state obligations introduced by IIAs and enforced though ISDS, they provide the scaffolding upon which the regulatory chill concept within IIAs has developed.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Internalisation of International Investment Agreements in Public Policymaking: Developing a Conceptual Framework of Regulatory Chill

et al. 2018

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The growing number of public policy measures challenged through investor-state dispute settlement has raised critiques that international investment agreements could lead governments to avoid introducing new policy measures out of a fear that these could be challenged by foreign investors, often referred to as 'regulatory chill'. While the body of work on regulatory chill is still in its infancy, there is a need to interrogate extant studies to better understand the state of the knowledge and the methodological approaches being employed to produce an evidence base. Grounded in a critical review of the existing literature, this paper develops a conceptual framework of regulatory chill, identifying it as one possible policy response wherein investment agreements are internalised by policy makers as considerations during their policy decision-making. Three distinct bodies of work were identified in the literature which helped to populate this framework, including analysis of investment treaty language and awards, interviews with policy makers to explore internalisation of such treaties, and case studies of suspected regulatory chill policy responses. The conceptual framework is intended to help drive forward a cohesive research agenda on regulatory chill that can underpin the ongoing investment treaty reform. Policy Implications• Threats of international investment arbitration by powerful companies can be effective in guiding a state's regulatory behaviour.• Regulatory chill is a relevant consideration for all public policy areas, not just within environmental regulation where the concept has originated and developed.• Policy responses to a perceived threat of arbitration are mediated by political and economic factors including political will and financial capacity of the state.• Improving policy maker knowledge of the obligations produced by international investment agreements and existing case law may reduce the chance of regulatory chill responses.Global Policy (2018) 9:2

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Internalisation of International Investment Agreements in Public Policymaking: Developing a Conceptual Framework of Regulatory Chill

et al. 2018

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“…It has been suggested that ISDS may affect a government's willingness to regulate in the public interest (Van Harten and Scott 2015). While evidence for regulatory chill is widespread for fields other than health, for example for environmental regulation (Brown 2013), evidence for this phenomenon is just starting to accumulate in health research (Neumayer 2001;Tienhaara 2011;Van Harten and Scott 2015). A concrete example of regulatory chill was the official statement from the government of New Zealand that it would not pursue tobacco plain packaging legislation until a decision was made in the investor-state litigation against Australia for the same policy (3 News 2015).…”

Section: Underlying and Immediate Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conceptual framework for investigating the impacts of international trade and investment agreements on noncommunicable disease risk factors

Schram

Rückert

VanDuzer

et al. 2017

Health Policy and Planning

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We developed a conceptual framework exploring pathways between trade and investment and noncommunicable disease (NCD) outcomes. Despite increased knowledge of the relevance of social and structural determinants of health, the discourse on NCD prevention has been dominated by individualizing paradigms targeted at lifestyle interventions. We situate individual risk factors, alongside key social determinants of health, as being conditioned and constrained by trade and investment policy, with the aim of creating a more comprehensive approach to investigations of the health impacts of trade and investment agreements, and to encourage upstream approaches to combating rising rates of NCDs. To develop the framework we employed causal chain analysis, a technique which sequences the immediate causes, underlying causes, and root causes of an outcome; and realist review, a type of literature review focussed on explaining the underlying mechanisms connecting two events. The results explore how facilitating trade in goods can increase flows of affordable unhealthy imports; while potentially altering revenues for public service provision and reshaping domestic economies and labour markets-both of which distribute and redistribute resources for healthy lifestyles. The facilitation of cross-border trade in services and investment can drive foreign investment in unhealthy commodities, which in turn, influences consumption of these products; while altering accessibility to pharmaceuticals that may mediate NCDs outcomes that result from increased consumption. Furthermore, trade and investment provisions that influence the policy-making process, set international standards, and restrict policy-space, may alter a state's propensity for regulating unhealthy commodities and the efficacy of those regulations. It is the hope that the development of this conceptual framework will encourage capacity and inclination among a greater number of researchers to investigate a more comprehensive range of potential health impacts of trade and investment agreements to generate an extensive and robust evidence-base to guide future policy actions in this area.

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Why, When, and How Global Companies Get Organized

Porter¹,

Brown²

2013

The Handbook of Global Companies

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Do countries fail to raise environmental standards? An evaluation of policy options addressing ''regulatory chill''

Cited by 19 publications

References 4 publications

Internalisation of International Investment Agreements in Public Policymaking: Developing a Conceptual Framework of Regulatory Chill

Internalisation of International Investment Agreements in Public Policymaking: Developing a Conceptual Framework of Regulatory Chill

A conceptual framework for investigating the impacts of international trade and investment agreements on noncommunicable disease risk factors

Why, When, and How Global Companies Get Organized

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