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22 J. World Investment & Trade 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/jworldit22 and id is 1 raw text is: .,i            JOURNAL OF WORLD INVESTMENT &                   r
BRILL                    TRADE 22 (2021) 1-40
N IJ H O F F                                                    brill.comjwit
Neo-Liberalism, State-Capitalism and
Ordo-Liberalism: 'Institutional Economics'
and 'Constitutional Choices' in Multilevel
Trade Regulation
Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann I ORCID: 0000-0003-2312-6581
Law Department, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
ulrich.petersmann@eui.eu
Armin Steinbach
German Federal Ministry of Finance, Berlin, Germany
steinbach@colt.mpg.de
Abstract
Reforms of international trade and investment law and institutions are hampered by
conflicting economic paradigms. For instance, utilitarian Anglo-Saxon neo-liberalism
(e.g. promoting self-regulatory market forces privileging the homo economicus), con-
stitutional European ordo-liberalism (e.g. protecting multilevel, constitutional rights
and judicial remedies of European Union citizens), and authoritarian state-capitalism
(e.g. protecting totalitarian power monopolies of the communist party in China)
pursue different legal and institutional designs of trade and investment agreements.
Globalization and its transformation of national into transnational public goods
(PG s) require extending constitutional and institutional economics to multilevel gov-
ernance of transnational PG s in order to enhance the wealth of nations. Maintaining
the worldwide legal and dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) - and interpreting its regional and national exception clauses broadly in order
to reconcile diverse, national and regional institutions of economic integration and of
'embedded liberalism' - remains in the interest of all WTO member states.
* The authors' views expressed in this article are strictly personal.

© KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2021 1 DOI:10.1163/22119000-12340202