Choice Of Arbitrators: Balancing Cooptation With Capitalization Of Knowledge

Over the past three decades, international governance has emerged as a major force influencing the non-market behavior of enterprises with soft law widely recognized, including intergovernmental campaigns and policy committees, international financial and audit standards, international dispute resolution programs, environmental social governance (ESG) reporting programs, and new technology governance guidelines. Soft law indicates how to form the influence mechanism for the different characteristics of the enterprise’s main body that produce a specific kind of result. This empirical study examined and analyzed the process model from the capitalization of social capital inequality to its final effect. Based on the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the context of soft law, the author searched the details of 316 cases and coded 291 arbitrators from the international investment arbitration database and found that under political uncertainty and a power imbalance, the nomination of arbitrators is closely related to knowledge. However, the network location is different from the experience that social capital carries. The enterprise's goal is to work with the host government through a combination of strategies and resources provided by the arbitrator in the delay claims process.