How can we explain one of the most puzzling and controversial international law regimes of our time: investor-state dispute settlement? Based on painstaking archival research and interviews, St John goes beyond the narrative that capital importing countries, pushed by corporate greed and investor lobbying, signed on to investment treaties without knowing what they got into. Instead, she demonstrates that well-meaning international bureaucrats, at the World Bank, were largely behind the emergence of this exceptional regime with, also for them, unintended consequences. The book offers a captivating story of how international institutions matter and how innocent, incremental steps can create a path dependent Frankenstein that may be difficult to control or reform. Joost Pauwelyn, Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies ukryj opis