Author(s)

Kaiheng Hu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ East China University of Political Science, Shanghai, 201620, China

Corresponding Author

Kaiheng Hu

ABSTRACT

Climate crisis is an urgent problem on the international level that demands the states to pursue bold policies and multifaceted global investment undertakings. Isolator mechanisms to solve state disputes between investors (ISDS) tend to permit multinational corporations to dispute climate policies, which introduce a regulatory chill, and acts as a restraint to policy-making in weaker nations. This paper examines the political aspect of the authority of a host state to control as part responsibility based political authority that is crucial to the task of domestic and international development of climate goals. It considers the devices of law that exist, such as the preambles of treaties, substantive and general exceptions and demonstrates their failure to balance the structural imbalances of power. The new item in the paper is institutional solution: procedural climate carve outs that should be used as one of the tools of strengthening improved state capacity and legitimacy and undermining investor power, protecting policy space, and ensuring political accountability. The article points out the impossibility of balancing the protection of investments and climate, which is not only a legal issue, but actually a political issue.

KEYWORDS

Climate Governance, Investor–State Dispute Settlement, Procedural Carve-Outs, Sovereignty, Political Legitimacy

CITE THIS PAPER

Kaiheng Hu, Safeguarding Host State Political Authority in Climate Governance: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Procedural Carve-Outs. Journal of Political Science Research (2025) Vol. 6: 102-110. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.23977/polsr.2025.060115.

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