There is a potentially correct analogy between international tax regulation and platform content regulation because there is an homology between capital and information. On this basis, this chapter foregrounds three resemblances between tax regulation and content moderation. First, non-State actors access, manage and regulate through platforms flows of capital and similarly flows of information exploiting regulatory differentials, so that there is the need for regulatory alignment in both cases. Second, since both capital and information escape the regulatory reach of States, a common standard must be achieved in both cases. Third, such common standard can be achieved only if home States of Global Actors owning platforms assume together the obligation to moderate profit diversion as well as immoderate use of platform content through procedural accountability. The chapter explains the scope of the global tax problem, and then details the process by which policies have been developed and describes the tax implications of platforms. The chapter concludes suggesting lessons that can be learned from tax regulation for platform responsibility rules: the homology between capital and information points to regulatory structures that reduce excessive opportunism and immoderation in the use of computational capital by platforms.

Chapter 10 explores democracy versus autocracy. It offers a frequency-based fitness analysis of the political regimes in the world, demonstrating the superior fitness of democracy, represented by the United States in time and place, but also revealing the resilience of non-democratic forms of government, represented by China. Countering the larger historical trend, democracy has retreated and autocracy has gained in recent years. It is difficult to tell whether this is a temporary setback for democracy or the start of a longer trend. Evolution does not assume constant progress, so the chapter dives deeper into the performance criterion for competing political regimes by peeling off the labels and examining different components of a political regime. In addition, the chapter offers a discussion of how East Asians have lived with the liberal international order, which most current American and Western leaders view as central to their fight against autocracy.

This chapter explores the role of three global economic institutions (GEIs) in contemporary economic governance: the International Monetary Fund, (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). GEIs are key components of global economic governance, and their activities are central to the pursuit of accountability, efficiency and equity in the global economy. The impact of GEIs on states and societies is complex and widely varying assessments of the performance of these organisations can be found in the literature. Given the absence of theoretical consensus on the roles and functions of GEIs, the first part of the chapter examines competing perspectives on international organisations.

Australia’s extraordinary economic boom continued throughout the period covered by this volume. By the end of 2005, the economy had enjoyed fifty-seven quarters of consecutive economic growth: Paul Keating’s ‘recession we had to have’ was a distant memory. Unemployment fell to slightly more than 5 per cent, the lowest rate for three decades. The government’s budget was enjoying record surpluses. Australia’s economic growth rate in the period was substantially above that of the average for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the grouping of leading industrialised economies. Australia’s ranking in the OECD on per capita income rose from eighteenth in the early 1990s to eighth by 2005. Astute intervention by the Reserve Bank of Australia through the imposition of a marginal increase in interest rates in early 2005 appeared to have succeeded in deflating the housing bubble and in ensuring a soft landing for the economy.

Just over a century old, John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) remains a seminal document of the twentieth century. At the time, the book was a prescient analysis of political events to come. In the decades that followed, this still controversial text became an essential ingredient in the unfolding of history. In this essay, we review the arc of experience since 1919 from the perspective of Keynes’s influence and his changing understanding of economics, politics, and geopolitics. We identify how he, his ideas, and this text became key reference points during times of turbulence as actors sought to manage a range of shocks. Near the end of his life, Keynes would play a central role in planning the world economy’s reconstruction after World War II. We argue that the “global order” that evolved since then, marked by increasingly polarized societies, leaves the community of nations ill prepared to provide key global public goods or to counter critical collective threats.

The rule of law (ROL) is invoked by multinational institutions, Western governments and in China as a political expectation of what legitimate governance looks like. Chinese leaders regularly make claims that are translated into commitments to uphold the ROL, and they generalize this rhetoric to the international level. Constrained by top-down conceptions, China’s idea of an international ROL becomes a hypothetical yet coherent and attractive possibility. Western legal scholars and political scientists are significantly more diverse and sceptical; most do not speak about an international rule of law, for a variety of reasons. This does not mean that there is no role for international law, but it does mean that for many Western scholars and practitioners, domestic conversations about an ROL ideal do not travel to the international level. Ideals can be useful even if they remain elusive. Yet the very different Western and Chinese understandings of the ROL ideal and its international implications may limit China’s international efforts to build international support for the vision that Chinese leaders are intentionally and assiduously creating.

For the past forty years China has been developing its network of international investment agreements. While initially China followed the template set by contracting partner countries, it has increasingly adopted its own approach towards investment protection in treaty negotiations, in an attempt to translate its rapid economic growth into greater political and negotiating power. This aspiration is also visible in China’s domestic policy initiatives concerning inward investment, in particular its enactment of the Foreign Investment Law and its implementation of related measures, including exemptions from tax liability for certain reinvestments. China’s continued shaping of investment treaties in accordance with its own bespoke needs has the potential to influence the future development of international investment law worldwide. This chapter first summarizes the history of China’s investment treaty practice and its domestic policies concerning inward investment. It then looks at issues that have arisen in investment treaty arbitrations involving China (as a respondent) or its nationals (as claimants). Finally, it analyzes China’s proposals for international investment law reform.

Chapter 4 reconstruct how the zeitgeist, the political and economic practices, and the geopolitical and societal circumstances of the war times guided Western Europe to a path of deeper international and regional cooperation focused on free trade and valuta convertibility. During exile and occupation, European governments fleshed out plans and schemes for post-war cooperation, primordially in the domains of socio-economic and the financial-economic planning, in greater (practical) detail. Initially, however, the step from grand designs and lofty models for a post-war Western order that could ‘win the peace’ to the practices of policies of cooperation was taken via the institutional engineering in the Atlantic world, most prominently through the ‘system’ envisioned in Bretton Woods. However, the original ideas behind Bretton Woods soon proved a bridge too far in practice, which complicated global ambitions as well as the proper build-up of Atlantic-wide institutions—and pushed Western Europe to think and act ‘beyond Americanisation’.

The chapter gives a detailed account of inter-state corporations in combatting cybercrime and its limitations. The chapter situates the current negotiations of a new legal instrument to counter cybercrime within the UN’s historical framework of efforts to enhance co-operation against general organised crime and cybercrime. In particular, it analyses the main issues that have held back progress in enhancing co-operation. It then proceeds to examine the current negotiation process and the prospects for effective co-operation once the negotiations come to an end, highlighting the potentially impactful legal implications of the work of the UN ad hoc committee on cybercrime.

The chapter analyses how trade agreements balance liberalisation of digital trade with cybersecurity concerns. The chapter identifies the strengths, weaknesses, and ambiguities facing digital trade regulation in these agreements. As a way to address the tension between international trade law and cybersecurity, it examines security exception clauses in different trade agreements. It also analyses the efforts found in recent regional trade agreements to direct state parties to have regard to international standards concerning cybersecurity issues. It concludes that harmonisation of such standards would suggest the possibility of a greater coherence in cybersecurity governance.

This chapter considers the current foreign policy debate among elites and between elites and public, the prospect of a new policy consensus, and three possible alternative directions for the future.

When China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) more than twenty years ago, it positioned itself as a partner of the developing world. This chapter assesses the role that China has played vis-à-vis the Global South in WTO negotiations. The existing scholarly literature tends to portray China either as a development partner, given ideological South-South ties, or as an economic competitor, given its own economic transformation. Based on an analysis of China’s negotiation behaviour and other WTO members’ perceptions of its role, the chapter argues that China plays an increasingly ambiguous role vis-à-vis the Global South. China’s political intention to support a broader development agenda is increasingly undermined by the way in which its larger economic size leads to competition with other developing countries. The specific conflict lines that emerge reflect in part the increasing heterogeneity of the Global South. Perceptions of China’s role are moreover linked to the political agenda of Special and Differential Treatment (S&D) for developing countries. Other developing countries increasingly see China also as a competitor for development-related flexibilities and exemptions in the multilateral trade regime.

Since its accession to the WTO twenty years ago, China’s image has shifted from a good student aspiring to assimilate itself into the multilateral trading system to one that is increasingly alienated from key WTO principles. How has China’s perspective on WTO been evolving? What are the reasons behind China’s changing perspective? This chapter addresses these questions from the Chinese perspective with a comprehensive analysis of the key moments in China’s first two decades in the WTO, followed by practical suggestions on how to engage China more constructively in the WTO and beyond.

This book is designed as a guidebook to the multilateral trading system, its past, its present, and a look toward its potential future. It includes taking the reader on a virtual walk through the corridors of the WTO, the Italianate Centre William Rappard, after hearing of the history of trade and trade negotiations, to sit in on some of the working sessions of delegates. The book’s objective is to convey an understanding of the value of the WTO, as well as the values that it promotes, to have a first-hand feel for what the WTO is all about, to understand its importance and its shortcomings, and to join with it in celebrating its successes. The look to the future includes in these pages some ideas upon which to start a discussion of how to obtain the oft-pledged “WTO reform.”

An isolated approach to climate action hinged on nationalism and built on the superiority complexes of countries in the Minority World will not be enough to address the climate emergency. Climate multilateralism, despite its imperfections, remains a potent tool for addressing the tragedies of our commons.

Global governance entails a “transnationalization” of what is conventionally described as international authority, vested in multilateral organizations such as the UN. This process entails an increased reliance on private or non-state actors, and on voluntary and marked-based mechanisms of governance. In many cases, so-called “private” authority is central to global governance arrangements. This aspect of contemporary global governance raises questions about how the authority to govern is established. If authority is not delegated by states, but seized by private actors, our theories for explaining its emergence becomes important. I develop an argument about how authority can be established from scratch, without prior authority, by virtue of the sheer facticity of political rule. In this conception, authority is not the basis for political rule, but a result of it. I explore this dynamic with regards to different issue-areas in multilateral settings.