Category: The Erosion Case

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/investment-treaty-arbitration-and-public-law-9780199217892

Gus Van Harten, publishing with Oxford University Press, argues that investor-state dispute settlement illegitimately transfers public regulatory authority to private tribunals. He characterizes the system as an unprecedented mechanism of global administrative law, warning that it allows privately contracted adjudicators to override “well-established, respected and independent judiciaries.” The foundational critique aggressively exposes the democratic deficit within international arbitration, yet its sharp adversarial tone risks alienating defenders of the institutional status quo. The book arms future trade-law scholars with the definitive public-law argument against the private adjudication of sovereign regulatory disputes. The legal critique locks in the erosion case of the thesis by detailing how arbitration mechanisms systematically hollow out domestic governance.

https://ia600503.us.archive.org/28/items/highereducationto2030oecdvol02globalization/The%20Globalization%20Paradox%2C%20Dani%20Rodrik.pdf

Dani Rodrik, publishing with Oxford University Press, theorizes that deep economic integration mathematically requires the forfeiture of national democratic sovereignty. He formulates the political economy “trilemma,” asserting that a society cannot simultaneously maintain hyperglobalization, the nation-state, and democratic politics. The structural framework brilliantly diagnoses the inherent friction between international markets and domestic policy, though its macroeconomic scope sacrifices granular legal analysis. This text provides readers evaluating the international economic order with an airtight structural logic explaining why states cannot have both absolute autonomy and global capital. The trilemma directly drives the thesis by proving that participation in the modern economic system mandates the erosion of sovereign policy space.

https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00342

John J. Mearsheimer, writing in International Security, targets foreign-policy planners with a structural diagnosis of the liberal international order’s collapse. He argues that three inherent flaws—democracy promotion, sovereignty backlashes, and hyperglobalization—inevitably doomed the unipolar system from its inception. This sweeping critique persuades powerfully but never exposes its verdict to actual disconfirmation, allowing the realist conclusion to sit safely within a rigged historical framing. Mearsheimer sidesteps the strongest counterarguments from scholars like Ikenberry and Keohane while outsourcing his core economic claims to borrowed authorities like Kuttner and Ruggie. He ultimately delivers a commanding verdict that persuades without proving, creating a closed loop where history merely confirms the realism it presupposes.