In Chapter 6 I investigate the increasing use of Private Security and Military Contractors as armed guards, mainly in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, during the USA’s lengthy occupations there, but also elsewhere. I question whether this represents the erosion of international and domestic US prohibitions on mercenarism and find that it does not; as with the previous two cases, these prohibitions changed rather than disappeared. This process occurred as the US government incorporated armed contractors into its operational command and control structures, while the private firms themselves developed mechanisms of self-regulation through a code of conduct and a professional association. Communications technology played a major role in process at first, but then bureaucratic dynamics took precedence. The boundaries between public and private violence have shifted, but most recognisable forms of mercenarism remain prohibited.

The absence of ISDS cases against China may mean that investors are deprived of adequate and effective remedies for resolving investment disputes. Based on [type of empirical research], the authors find support for the view that the procedures offered by Chinese IIAs and legislation promote dispute resolution that is mutually satisfactory among investors and closely related public officials. However, they also find a possible trade-off in the sense that such solutions might depend on and promote corruption. Against this background, they explore how ISDS could contribute to combating corruption. [Abstract needs to be filled out and follow a logic of legitimacy critique, research method, finding/caveats – not currently clear]

Global law firms and their prominent postion in the investment arbitration market is under-appreciated; yet there is a sound hypothesis that law firms seek to establish and maintain their social capital in the arbitration field in a similar manner as individuals such as arbitrators and counsel, as was captured in Dezalay and Garth’s pioneering study. Building on the social networks of arbitrators, this study focuses on the relationships between the most influential arbitrators and the most influential law firms in the system and how these relationships might create real or perceived conflicts of interest issues for the ISDS system. Using mixed methods – integrated network, statistical and doctrinal analyses – the chapter documents how the law firms have gained a central position in the ISDS network by establishing strong relationships to leading arbitrators. The author finds that the top law firms have positioned themselves as ‘gatekeepers’ to the ISDS system, in particular in terms of distribution of cases among potential arbitrators and the acceptance of new arbitrators, and discusses possible impacts on the perceived independence and legitimacy of the ISDS system.

In this Introduction to the book, I raise the question of the possible erosion of prohibitions on assassination, torture, and mercenarism. I discuss the limits of ‘norm death’ as an explanation and propose instead that a ‘normative transformation’ has occurred. I outline how pragmatism, practice theory, and relational sociology will inform my perspective, how I will critique and build on theories of norm change in IR, and how I will analyse the three cases: the USA’s targeted killing programme, the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme, and the USA’s extensive employment of armed contractors in war zones.

An enduring criticism of international arbitration and its legitimacy is that parties can appoint ‘their’ arbitrator unilaterally, which is by itself contrary to traditional notions of judicial impartiality. As a result, the striking lack of dissents and their asymmetry when they occur – usually by the losing party appointed arbitrator – raises questions over whether arbitrators act independently and impartially in relation to the party that appointed them. This chapter investigates whether a background in civil law, as opposed to common law where dissent is a more familiar phenomenon, could explain the absence of arbitral dissents. Using PITAD data on both dissents and arbitrator background, the author explores this potential causal factor. The findings, that differences in background seem unrelated to frequency of dissents, lends some support to the view that the relationship between an arbitrator and the appointing party is a main driver of dissenting opinions.

In this concluding chapter, I discuss my overall findings and their implications. I draw three paired comparisons. Contrasting the first two cases, I find technology was especially important in determining the robustness of normative transformation. Contrasting the first two and third cases, I find normative transformation can occur even without a dedicated set of elite actors acting as ‘entrepreneurs’. Contrasting my approach with that of others, I find a focus on situated creativity, situational rather than personal agency, and a pragmatist view of action clarifies dynamics that are confusing in conventional constructivist theories. I also discuss how my approach may support investigations into other kinds of normative transformations, such as those involving diaspora communities and global governance. I finish by discussing how my findings and my approach support the projects of critical war and security studies and can inform activists and NGOs seeking to limit aggressive or militarised counterterrorism.

The growing judicialization of ISDS through the use of precedent may be contributing to improved consistency in the interpretation of the FET standard. The FET standard and its interpretation by arbitral tribunals has been blamed for giving foreign investors carte blanche to sanction governments over broad swathes of policy. It is said to be lacking any common definition and that it is a vague and ambiguous catch-all term. This chapter provides a rigorous qualitative and quantitative empirical assessment of the use of citations and their role in the development of the FET standard consistently by tribunals across time. Based on the in-depth exploration of FET case law the authors find that three landmark cases have a de facto stare decisis with the effect of reconciling competing interpretations and ultimately providing a relatively consistent standard.

In Chapter 3, I propose three causal mechanisms to explain the normative transformations I investigate: convention reorientation, technological revision, and network synthesis. These capture the causal role played by processes of discursive contestation, technical development, and bureaucratic politics. Crucially, I propose that these mechanisms interweave, in an arrangement of reciprocal reinforcement. I also propose a three-stage analytical process for analysing cases such as the ones in this book: de-reification, attributing agency, and tracing transactions. This process allows investigators to ‘break down’ supposed norms into their constitutive and unfolding relations, locate sources of transformative power, and trace how that power operated to

produce a change. I contextualise both the mechanisms and the analytical method with reference to relational sociology, practice theory, and scholarship on institutions.

Introduction

With the globalization of security and the increase of transnational, nontraditional security concerns, terrorist and non-state armed groups have replaced conventional military threats as the main security hazards to many states (Kaldor, 2012). Especially since the end of the Cold War, the diversification of terrorist groups has become recognized as a substantial transnational security menace (Albanese, 2012) that poses severe challenges to economic and social stability (Bossong and Holmes, 2016).

Consultations between the EU and China with regard to counterterrorism measures take place on both the bilateral and multilateral levels. On the bilateral level, the EU–China Dialogue on Security and Defence, the Informal Dialogue on the Middle East and North Africa and, to some extent, the EU–China Dialogue on Human Rights (concerning terrorist activities in mainland China) address these issues. Additionally, the EU and China have organized several meetings under the ASEM Framework, in which they have addressed transnational terrorism. In 2003, the first ASEM counter-terrorism meeting was held in Beijing and then took place annually until 2012. In the context of the 10th general ASEM summit in 2014, the EU and China decided to launch an institutionalized forum to discuss the political situation in the Middle East (extending to Afghanistan and Central Asia), Northern Africa and the Sahel zone. This forum was expected to foster joint Chinese-European activities to combat the rise of extremism and terrorism in these regions – a plan that was never put into practice. Yet efforts to establish joint counter-terrorism measures continued. In 2016, the EU's law enforcement agency EUROPOL and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) joined the Agreement on Strategic Cooperation (EUROPOL, 2016) that includes the exchange of information and intelligence.

On the multilateral level, the UN provides the main framework for antiterrorism, in particular the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact. Both China and the EU stress the UN's crucial role in counter-terrorism and adhere to its principles. Beyond this, both are part of international UN-led counter-terrorism talks. The first state commissioner for counter-terrorism and security matters represents China in these meetings.

Introduction

The EU and China are, although relative newcomers to global governance, two of the most important and influential global actors. In particular, during the four years of the Trump administration and its rather protectionist and isolationist foreign policy, attention has turned towards the EU and China when it comes to issues of global governance. They do not only possess the economic strength to affect global governance (Christiansen et al, 2019), but are also decisive rule-makers on the international stage. While both the EU and China are still struggling to find their rightful place on this stage, they are already central driving forces of globalization and have become increasingly entangled in international politics and the international economy.

The question of whether this leads to increased cooperation or whether it deepens competition and rivalries divides the scholarly debate on the subject. Some observers hold that China's rule-making ambitions will unavoidably lead to deepening tensions based on the fact that China actively challenges existing rules, norms and procedures – and thereby in the end also the ‘liberal script’ of the current world order (Huotari and Drinhausen, 2020; Meinhardt, 2020). A frequently mentioned argument from this school of thought is that China might use its economic leverage to exert political power and create international rules and even institutions that are more in line with its own identity and interests (Geeraerts, 2011; Legarda, 2020). Critics argue that China, as one of the driving forces of current world politics, is so deeply entangled with other economies and political powers, and so reliant on integration into the international system, that it inevitably needs to seek more cooperation (see, for example, van der Putten and Chu, 2012). This assumption dates back to the ‘convergence myth’ (see Chapter 1) and reflects the integral principles of liberal-institutionalist thinking.

This chapter examines whether, how and under which conditions the increasing global entanglement of the EU and China actually translates into security cooperation. It takes a temporal perspective to include the changing dynamics and geopolitical developments that surround the EU and China, presuming that in a globalized world, no actor's behaviour can be understood without embedding it in a larger context. The chapter proceeds in three steps.

China's rise a global power is arguably one of the most important international developments of our time. Going from the world's largest developing power to an emerging pillar of world politics, China is on its way to becoming a new superpower with the potential to challenge the current world order. In line with this development, a widespread debate has emerged concerning the implications of China's rise. With regard to the EU, these implications have been discussed primarily in terms of economic relations, neglecting the changing relationship of the EU and China in the security realm. Similarly, cooperation in EU–China relations has hitherto received scant academic attention, with most European research outputs focusing on the challenges, risks and threats emanating from China and its increased international engagement. The ambition of this book was to disentangle the complex Sino-European relationship in the security realm and to explore and explain the modes and mechanisms that lead to cooperation between the EU and China beyond the scope of trade and investment. It was driven by the presumption that EU–China security cooperation is not a normative agenda, but rather an empirical issue (Christiansen et al, 2019). To answer it, we had to probe deeper into various security dimensions. The purpose of this concluding chapter is to bring together and compare the individual analytical chapters and to combine temporal patterns with the findings from the cross-sectional analyses of three exemplary security issues. Based on the preceding analyses, the chapter seeks to put the book's main findings in a wider context and points towards the potential and challenges of future avenues for the development of EU–China security relations.

The chapter begins by briefly summing up the main findings of the analytical chapters. The analytical chapters of this book have shown how complex and multifaceted EU–China relations in general and security relations in particular are. While economy and trade remain firmly at the heart of EU–China relations, the security dimension of their relationship is also considerable. Having developed a solid and institutionalized partnership, interest often seems to trump values when it comes to cooperation.