This article presents selected findings on India relating to the effects of international investment agreements (IIAs) on national governance. Our research used ethnography-inspired methods to explore the often-voiced hypothesis that IIAs induce good governance reforms in their state parties. Our findings demonstrate that the good governance hypothesis is too sweeping and lacks subtlety, but they also bring forward new conceptualizations of the impact of the international investment regime on national governance. Our research shows that governance actors use IIAs selectively in order to advance various agendas and interests. The Indian case study shows that rather than acting like a monolith when reacting to the experience of IIAs, the state is instead a site of struggle between different actors with different motivations, agendas, and interests. In such context, IIAs produce various formal–institutional as well as ideological–discursive effects that have not been captured by the existing literature. First, IIAs lead to the simultaneous practices of internalization through external adjustment and internalization through accommodation. At the same time, these modes of internalization lead to rearrangements by internalization within the public administration. Second, governance actors resort to various narratives about IIAs, which we present in this article. Importantly, the deployments of various narratives about IIAs are context-dependent and are used by governance actors tactically as convenient tools in internal political struggles within the public administration. These findings have important consequences for the design and reform of international investment regulation, should such regulation have ambition, as it does, to promote good governance.

中文翻译：

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印度的投资条约和国家治理：重新安排、赋权和纪律

本文介绍了有关印度国际投资协定 (IIA) 对国家治理影响的一些调查结果。我们的研究使用受民族志启发的方法来探索经常提出的假设，即国际投资协定会在其缔约国中引发良好的治理改革。我们的研究结果表明，善治假设过于笼统，缺乏微妙之处，但它们也提出了国际投资制度对国家治理影响的新概念。我们的研究表明，治理参与者有选择地使用 IIA 来推进各种议程和利益。印度的案例研究表明，在对国际投资协定的经历做出反应时，国家并没有像一个巨石一样行事，而是一个具有不同动机、议程和利益的不同行为者之间的斗争场所。在这种情况下，国际投资协定产生了各种形式的、制度的以及意识形态的话语效应，这些效应尚未被现有文献捕捉到。首先，国际投资协定导致同时进行的实践通过外部调整内部化和通过住宿内化。同时，这些内化模式导致内化重排在公共行政部门内。其次，治理参与者诉诸关于 IIA 的各种叙述，我们将在本文中介绍这些叙述。重要的是，关于 IIA 的各种叙述的部署取决于上下文，并被治理行为者在策略上用作公共行政内部政治斗争的便利工具。这些发现对国际投资监管的设计和改革具有重要影响，如果此类监管具有促进良好治理的雄心的话。