More than 1,000 investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) claims have been brought to date based on investment treaties, most of them in recent years. Many of the claims have challenged sensitive areas of government regulation, and some have resulted in multi-billion-dollar awards. ISDS has become a posterchild for anti-globalization groups and is increasingly considered problematic by a range of developing country governments. Yet, criticism of ISDS is not always associated with opposition to economic globalization, multinational firms, or to a rules-based international order. The CATO Institute, a prominent libertarian think-tank, is critical of what it sees as a positive discrimination in favour of foreign investors and the German Association of Judges, a stalwart defender of the rule of law, came out against the mechanism in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Right or wrong, ISDS has become one of the most controversial issues in global economic governance.

In recent years, the international dispute settlement mechanisms of both trade and investment, which were regarded as hallmark institutions in both fields, have never been tested as they are today. (On the trade side, the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which functions through ad hoc panels and the standing Appellate Body (AB), is witnessing a gradual demise of its appeal mechanism. This is because of the United States’ dissatisfaction with the overall conduct of business by the AB. Specifically, the United States accuses the AB of bias, judicial activism, and non-adherence to time-frames for hearing appeals, among other things (Sen 2019). In protesting against the AB’s alleged mischievousness, the United States is blocking the appointment and renewal of term of the AB’s members. The WTO’s AB shut down on 11 December 2019, being left with only one member after two of its members’ terms expired. With this stalemate in mind, countries are likely to resort to preferential trade agreements (PTA) in order to settle their disputes while those that are negotiating new PTAs will likely be influenced by the AB stalemate in constituting their dispute settlement chapters in their new agreements. Indeed, this has happened with the PTAs that were adopted during and after the time that the WTO Agreements were negotiated – the dispute settlement chapters mirror that of the WTO because it was believed to be an ideal system at the time. Equally, the misfortunes of the AB will likely be considered in the constitution and working of the existing and future PTAs’ dispute settlement institutions.

Renewable energy is playing a central role in countries’ efforts to diversify and move away from the use of fossil fuels. The shift to a low-carbon economy, through renewable energy power generation, is hugely dependent on public and private, domestic and foreign investments in the sector. However, the private sector, which is an important player for advancing the renewable energy sector, is faced with policy uncertainties and low returns on investments as compared to traditional energy sources (Mathews 2010). Therefore, the initial high costs of moving into the renewable energy sector need to be balanced out with governmental support that incentivizes investment in the renewable energy sector (Wilke 2011). The economic rationale behind government support for renewable energy rests on the fact that it has to overcome market failures arising from the inability of markets to account for social and environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions due to the use of traditional fossil fuels, while the environmental argument rests on advancing renewable energy production as a means of climate change mitigation (Peat 2012).

To explain how broader sections of the population than the nobility were included in Parliament we need to recapture the original character of representation as obligation. The chapter therefore presents the compellence model of obligation, which is predicated on ruler strength. The model is exemplified by the English case, which is traditionally taken as the paradigm for the alternative and most widely invoked model, which sees representation as the result of bargaining. Magna Carta is the classic historical precedent and it is here shown to depend on royal strength instead. The role of ruler strength and obligation is then further demonstrated by process-tracing the emergence of the English Parliament from the 1220s into the early 1300s. Though bargaining was pervasive, what channelled outcomes in a constitutional direction was the crown's capacity to enforce attandance across social orders. Bargaining was pervasive on the continent as well; what differed in England that the bottom-up requests for rights were preceded and followed by periods of strong royal capacity. The "fiscal fixation" of much social science thus needs to be revised. The institutional and, especially, judicial infrastructure in which state-society bargaining occurs is what shapes ultimate outcomes.

This book argues that justice rather than taxes was at the foundation of representative governance. The historical origins of representative institutions are typically sought in a fiscal bargain that pitted resource-poor rulers against subjects recently empowered through the growth of commercial wealth. Such an approach, however, fails to explain why representative institutions would become regular (since taxation was irregular), how social groups solved their collective action problem in resisting the ruler, and how exchanges with resource holders extended to include the whole polity. Acknowedging the role of justice in the emergence of representative institutions allows us to address these concerns. This requires, however, first noting that outcomes of interest often originate in conditions that are inversely related. This is defined as the normative/empirical inversion and is examined in connection to the importance of central power, the constitutional separation of powers, and the security of property rights. In all, state power emerges as paramount in securing constitutional outcomes. The chapter thus also makes the case for England as a strong state. It then provides a summary of the argument and concludes with a discussion of the case selection.

Part IV examines in greater detail a central concept in the preceding chapters: conditionality. Its ubiquity throughout the previous sections raises the question whether it might suffice to explain representation. The question is first approached by examining how conditionality operated in cases where ruler power was weak. Under such conditions, it led to "second-best constitutionalism," a pattern of governance emerging where rulers lacked power over the most powerful and developed conditional relations with groups they endowed with counterbalancing resources. This explains representative governance in cases where the regime was not able to control all social groups: representation was focused on the groups with conditional relations with the crown. This helps explain the cases of Hungary and Poland, which are treated here at greater length, as well as Sweden, Denmark, and the Holy Roman Empire, which are treated more briefly.

The conclusion examines some broader questions raised by the analysis. It first discusses the pattern of the normative/empirical inversion noted throughout the book, whereby conditions associated with some desirable outcomes (e.g. separation of powers) are projected back into an account of origins. This is identified as a major obstacle in effective causal analysis. Second, the chapter examines a fundamental underlying concern of the book, the origins of power. Although no answer can be offered, it explains the implications of the book's argument to our understanding of despotic and infrastructural power, perhaps the most influential formulation in social science, as well as to the distinction between direct and indirect rule, which is shaping discussion of the state in varied literatures. Third, the chapter offers some thoughts about how the medieval account I have provided can be reconciled with the early modern accounts that have proved far more influential in explanations of state- and institution-building. I conclude with some shorter thoughts on the implications of the argument on the use of bargaining theory in modern development theory, on the popular notion of land redistribution, and on Huntington's problem of political order and instability.