Epilogue: The Ventriloquism of Media

Historically, media studies and interaction studies have been estranged from each other. As John Durham Peters noted, this unfortunate situation can be traced back to the quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates, which can be summarized as the perennial opposition between the doctrine of dissemination, today represented by media studies, and the doctrine of dialogue, represented by interaction studies. This chapter calls this opposition into question by proposing to study media from a ventriloquial perspective. Communication is not only a question of co-construction and co-orientation, aspects on which interaction studies often focus, but also of delegation and tele-action, aspects that highlight the mediated dimension of any communicative act. The chapter illustrates the value of this perspective by providing an in-depth analysis of a videorecorded conflict mediation session. More specifically, it shows how a mediator acts as a medium in third-party dispute resolution by giving each party an opportunity to recognize their interests and positions in the other’s expressed interests and positions. The mediator thus acts as a ventriloquist who aims to help parties say things that reflect the compatibility of their respective interests, which seem incompatible at the onset of the mediation.

To Settle or to Fight to the End? Case-level Determinants of Early Settlement of Investor-State Disputes

International investment arbitration is a third-party dispute resolution mechanism aimed mainly at depoliticizing investment disputes and maintaining efficient investment flows among countries. Almost one-third of treaty-based investor-state disputes brought before this system are settled before the tribunal’s final ruling. Given the classical “Against Settlement” debate in the legal literature, we build an original database of treaty-based arbitrations from 1996 to 2016 to empirically test the determinants of early settlement. We find that the probability of settlement increases if the host state has no experience of resolving those kinds of disputes but decrease if it anticipates a favorable outcome. The nature of the regulatory measures applied by the host state and the identity of foreign investors are additional important determinants of settlement. Interestingly, we find strong evidence of a Dutch effect in dispute resolution.

The Peaceful Resolution of Territorial Disputes dataset, 1945–2015

This article introduces the Peaceful Resolution of Territorial Disputes (PRTD) dataset, covering all interstate territorial disputes (1945–2015). Our dataset captures proposals for the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes made by states involved in territorial claims at the disputant-year level. These proposals provide a concrete measure of changing state preferences toward negotiations, non-binding, and binding third-party dispute resolution methods over time. In contrast to existing attempt-level data, the monadic panel design of the dataset captures not only actual attempts at peaceful resolution – the result of an agreement between disputants – but also proposals for methods that did not occur but were preferred at a particular time point. Our dataset allows for robust and generalizable quantitative analyses of the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes that are sensitive to temporal, regional, claim-based, and state-level trends. To demonstrate the utility of our dataset, we use hybrid logistic regression to examine the determinants of binding PRTD proposals. Over-time changes in characteristics such as regime type and treaty commitments influence attitudes toward binding settlement methods differently than disputant-level measurements. We also show that time has a distinctively non-linear effect.

Third-Party Intervention and the Preservation of Bargaining Relationships

This article uses longitudinal bargaining contract data to examine whether third-party dispute resolution procedures improve the health of bargaining relationships and contribute to their preservation. The author uses survival analysis to assess whether the procedures correlate with the likelihood of relationship dissolution. This analysis shows that earlier procedures in the dispute resolution process, such as conciliation and mediation, are related to a lower likelihood of dissolution than are later ones. The author then uses dynamic panel models to consider whether third-party intervention pushes the parties to settle subsequent collective agreements voluntarily or earlier in the process, but he finds no evidence to this effect.

The Brexit Fiasco and the Failure of Article 50 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

Modern game theory and the economic theory of federalism may offer an alternative view on the Brexit fiasco, in which the British government should not bear exclusive responsibility for current disaster. Moreover, the design of Article 50 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) contains an intrinsic dysfunctional mechanism that generates irrational strategies. Article 50 is underdeveloped and should be redrafted. The two-year deadline provision should be replaced with a reasonable time period and should provide for a third-party dispute resolution mechanism in instances where free negotiations between the EU and the withdrawing Member State in the reasonable time period fail to achieve a winwin solution. This article also argues that the current sub-optimal institutional framework on the vertical and horizontal division of competences might be an additional generator of Euroscepticism. In order to prevent the decline of public support the EU should do less in current fields and should do much more in fields where it failed to exercise its authority and which cannot be addressed effectively at the local levels. The EU should redesign itself as an institution that mitigates broad potential sources of negative externalities, reinforcing the rule of law, protecting liberal democracy with all related civil liberties, reinforcing its political-global dimension, protecting its common cultural heritage, and combating destructive nationalisms, isolationisms and cultural introspections.

Legalized Dispute Resolution: Interstate and Transnational

We identify two ideal types of international third-party dispute resolution: interstate and transnational. Under interstate dispute resolution, states closely control selection of, access to, and compliance with international courts and tribunals. Under transnational dispute resolution, by contrast, individuals and nongovernmental entities have significant influence over selection, access, and implementation. This distinction helps to explain the politics of international legalization—in particular, the initiation of cases, the tendency of courts to challenge national governments, the extent of compliance with judgments, and the long-term evolution of norms within legalized international regimes. By reducing the transaction costs of setting the process in motion and establishing new constituencies, transnational dispute resolution is more likely than interstate dispute resolution to generate a large number of cases. The types of cases brought under transnational dispute resolution lead more readily to challenges of state actions by international courts. Transnational dispute resolution tends to be associated with greater compliance with international legal judgments, particularly when autonomous domestic institutions such as the judiciary mediate between individuals and the international institutions. Overall, transnational dispute resolution enhances the prospects for long-term deepening and widening of international legalization.

Legalization as Strategy: The Asia-Pacific Case

The Asia-Pacific region offers an example of low legalization of regional institutions and perhaps an explicit aversion to legalization. An examination of three key regional institutions—ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), and the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum)—confirms a regional process of institution building without legalization. Recent developments in these institutions permit some discrimination among competing explanations for low legalization. On the one hand, ASEAN has embraced a legalized dispute-settlement mechanism; Asian governments have also employed legalized global institutions. On the other hand, the ARF and APEC continue to resist clear-cut legal obligations and third-party dispute resolution. This pattern suggests that legalization is best viewed as driven by the demands of economic integration and as a strategic response by governments in particular institutional settings. These explanations undermine alternatives based on domestic legal culture and uniformly high sovereignty costs. The Asian economic crisis has reopened a debate over regional institutions, which may fix on legalization as part of a new regional institutional design.