Tarald Gulseth Berge

• Strain, Nicola Claire; Lie, Runar Hilleren; Chernykh, Yuliya; Espelid, Even; St John, Taylor & Langford, Malcolm [Show all 20 contributors for this article] (2024). Compliance politics and international investment disputes: a new dataset. Journal of international economic law. ISSN 1369-3034. 27(1), p. 70–92. doi: 10.1093/jiel/jgae004.
• Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Fauchald, Ole Kristian (2023). International Organizations, Technical Assistance, and Domestic Investment Laws. World Trade Review. ISSN 1474-7456. 22(1), p. 147–172. doi: 10.1017/S1474745622000453. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Can supranational actors influence domestic policy? In this article, we study how international organizations have sought to shape the contents of domestic laws aimed at protecting foreign investment. Traditionally, the influence of international organizations on public policy has been assumed to run through loan conditionalities. We build on a recent strand of literature indicating that international organizations can also influence public policy through technical assistance. Empirically, we present a cross-sectional mapping of the protection that states offer foreign investors in domestic investment laws, and a mapping of the advisory activities of the three main organizations offering technical assistance on foreign investment laws: the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Bank. We find that there are significant variations in protection offered under domestic investment laws, and variation in international organizations’ technical assistance over time and across organizations. To explore technical assistance as a causal mechanism for influence on public policy more closely in this field, we conduct a case study of the development of domestic investment legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

• Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Stiansen, Øyvind (2022). Bureaucratic capacity and preference attainment in international economic negotiations. The Review of International Organizations. ISSN 1559-7431. doi: 10.1007/s11558-022-09475-z. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  What determines states’ ability to influence the contents of international institutions? Extant scholarship on international economic negotiations highlights the importance of political and economic capacity in negotiations. In this article, we argue that another structural source of negotiating power has been overlooked: bureaucratic capacity. Building on in-depth interviews with a large sample of international economic negotiators, we develop a theory of how differences in bureaucratic capacity can give states advantages in bilateral negotiations. We test our theory on a dataset of bilateral investment treaties. To measure preference attainment, we combine a unique repository of states’ public negotiating mandates called model treaties and the texts of finalized investment treaties to compute the verbatim distances between states’ stated preferences and the treaties they negotiate. We then show that states with greater bureaucratic capacity than their counterparts tend to achieve higher preference attainment in investment treaty negotiations. Our results have important implications for scholarship on international negotiations and for policy-makers engaged in investment policy reform.

• Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Berger, Axel (2021). Do Investor-State Dispute Settlement Cases Influence Domestic Environmental Regulation? The Role of Respondent State Bureaucratic Capacity. Journal of International Dispute Settlement. ISSN 2040-3585. 12(1), p. 1–41. doi: 10.1093/jnlids/idaa027. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Does international politics influence domestic politics? In the investment treaty regime, there is currently a debate about whether investor-state dispute settlement cases influence respondent state domestic regulation. We present a systematic test of this relationship. Using two unique datasets, we examine whether investor-state cases targeting environmental measures influence respondent states’ environmental regulation. We make two theoretical contributions. First, we present an integrated typology of potential regulatory responses to investor-state dispute settlement cases. Second, we propose a novel, conditional theory of regulatory responses to investor-state cases. We argue that states’ responses should depend on their bureaucratic capacity. In our analysis, we find that respondent state bureaucratic capacity conditions the relationship between investor-state cases and subsequent domestic regulation. There is a more pronounced negative relationship between investor-state cases and regulatory behavior in states with high bureaucratic capacity than in low-capacity states.

• Berge, Tarald Laudal (2020). Dispute by Design? Legalization, Backlash, and the Drafting of Investment Agreements. International Studies Quarterly. ISSN 0020-8833. 64(4), p. 919–928. doi: 10.1093/isq/sqaa053. Full text in Research Archive
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & St. John, Taylor (2020). Asymmetric diffusion: World Bank ‘best practice’ and the spread of arbitration in national investment laws. Review of International Political Economy. ISSN 0969-2290. 28(3), p. 584–610. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1719429. Full text in Research Archive
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & Hveem, Helge (2018). The International Regime for Investment: A History of Failed Multilateralism. In Nölke, Andreas & May, Christian (Ed.), Handbook of the International Political Economy of the Corporation. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 978 1 78536 252 1. p. 311–328. doi: 10.4337/9781785362538.00028. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this chapter, we discuss two interrelated questions: (1) Why is there no multilateral agreement on investment? (2) Do we need a multilateral investment agreement? We begin with a broad examination of the historical roots of investment protection, and revisit hallmark efforts at reaching a multilateral accord. We then elaborate on the decentralized regime that has been instituted instead, with a focus on bilateral investment treaties and investment treaty arbitration. Next, we consider three sets of explanations for why the formal efforts at reaching a multilateral agreement have failed – an ideational account, political explanations, and various technical explanations. We also discuss why some actually view the decentralized treaty-based regime as a multilateral system in and of itself. We end our discussion by reviewing the recent legitimacy crisis surrounding the investment regime, and debate whether regionalism may be an expedient alternative to formal multilateralism in future global investment protection.

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• Berge, Tarald Gulseth; Rasmussen, Magnus Bergli & Thorsen, Dag Einar (2024). Et bærekraftig universitet? Om effekten av kortsiktighet og New Public Management ved USN.
• St John, Taylor; Langford, Malcolm; Chernykh, Yuliya; Stiansen, Øyvind; Berge, Tarald Gulseth & Puig, Sergio (2023). Bargaining in the Shadow of Awards. SSRN Electronic Journal.
• Berge, Tarald Gulseth (2023). UNCITRAL-forhandlingene om reform av investeringsvoldgift.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & St John, Taylor (2020). Why Do States Consent to Arbitration in National Investment Laws? Investment Treaty News Quarterly. ISSN 2519-8467. 11(2), p. 12–16.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal (2018). Investment Treaty Drafting and Investor Claims for Arbitration - implications for policymakers.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & Kuyper, Jonathan William (2018). Book Review - The Rise of Investor-State Arbitration: Politics, Law, and Unintended Consequences. Global Policy. ISSN 1758-5880.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & Alschner, Wolfgang (2018). Reforming Investment Treaties: Does treaty design matter? Investment Treaty News Quarterly. ISSN 2519-8467. p. 7–10.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal & Langford, Malcolm (2018). Hvor var Norge? Dagens næringsliv. ISSN 0803-9372.
• Berge, Tarald Laudal (2018). Jonathan Bonnitcha, Lauge N. S. Poulsen and Michael Waibel. 2017. The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime (Oxford: Oxford University Press). The Review of International Organizations. ISSN 1559-7431.
• Behn, Daniel Friedrich; Berge, Tarald Laudal & Langford, Malcolm (2018). Poor states or poor governance? Explaining outcomes in investment treaty arbitration. Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business. ISSN 0196-3228. 38(3), p. 333–389.
• Kirkebø, Tori Loven & Berge, Tarald Laudal (2016). Metodiske synder fra NUPI. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. p. 24–24.
• Langford, Malcolm; Behn, Daniel Friedrich & Berge, Tarald Laudal (2016). Poor States or Poor Governance? Explaining Outcomes in Investment Treaty Arbitration.
• Andresen, Martin Eckhoff & Berge, Tarald Laudal (2015). BSU-ordningen bør avvikles. Dagbladet. ISSN 0805-3766.

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