Signalling Demand for Foreign Investment: Postsocialist Countries in the Global Bilateral Investment Treaties Network

A unique dataset on bilateral investment treaties provides a novel source of evidence on the link between neoliberal globalisation and market transition. We argue that postsocialist countries of Europe and Eurasia, more than other developing regions in the world, signed such treaties to signal demand for foreign investment in the spirit of neoliberalism. We calculated the density of the whole BIT network since its inception in 1959 to 2009, and density and centrality of different regional blocks within it, and found strong support for our argument. Yet, even if bilateral investment treaties are designed to promote foreign direct investment, dynamic panel regression models show that signing them does not automatically translate into foreign direct investment inflows for postsocialist European and Eurasian countries in the 1990–2010 period.