「投資ルール」の規定傾向にみる政策選択肢の検討

抄録

Under the world's investment liberalization trend, developing countries have been countering various international pressures to compel their respective domestic law reforms affecting investment policies. However, a careful review of major international law sources would tell that there is only limited consensus on the legal design of global common rules, which reflects the undeniable gaps of policy stance on the ultimate aim of liberalization. Such a mal-consensus seems creating increasing difficulties for developing countries in focusing their policies to govern law reforms.

This article reexamines the legal texts of “investment rules” in major international agreement, either multilateral, regional or bilateral, for the purpose of studying significant gaps of policy stance behind the difference of legal wordings. One of the important findings from the reexamination is a serious conflict among the liberalization promoters: the deregulationists vs. the strict liberalists. The last part of the article upholds the latter stance to be chosen by developing countries, with a view to evade arbitrary intervention but to develop clear and stable rules especially needed for long-term direct investors such as Japanese FDI in Asia.