Empirically Mapping Investment Arbitration Scholarship: Networks, Authorities, and the Research Front

Abstract

Scholarship on international investment arbitration is plentiful. Despite it being a relatively young field, it would be difficult to name one in which more books and articles have been published in recent years. The field is a dynamic one, attracting a diverse range of authors; the stakes are high, the knowledge is limited: scholarly work is necessary and to be welcome. The amount of available literature, however, also provides us for an opportunity to study its relationship with the field it purports to describe: in a nutshell, we do not study investment arbitration scholarship because we are naively surprised that it exists, or that there is so much of it. We know that there must be good reasons for it to do so, and to do so to this extent. It is precisely for these very good reasons that we can resolutely argue that investment arbitration scholarship is worth studying, and that studying investment arbitration scholarship can bring us a step closer to a better understanding of investment arbitration. Accordingly, this chapter seeks to provide a large-scale analysis of investment arbitration scholarship. By combining theoretical insights and big data empirical analysis, we seek to map the field, its actors, and, its dynamics, with a view to revealing latent patterns through citations, topics, and publication dynamics, but also through tribunals’ use of literature.