Reconceptualizing Foreign Investment as a Relational Venture.

It is easy amidst the controversy swirling today around foreign investment law to lose sight of what in fact we are seeking to regulate. What exactly is a foreign investment? What does it mean to consider foreign investment as a human social activity, and not just a macroeconomic statistic? And, if foreign investment is an important social activity of enduring value, then in the words of the emerging paradigm of our time for global socioeconomic relationships, is foreign investment as currently practiced "sustainable"? In this Essay, I argue that in a fundamental sense all foreign investment is "venture" capitalcapital "ventured" in a project in which there is a substantial element of risk, and whose success requires working skillfully with a range of necessary relationships and actors, against complex and often contentious background conditions that function as horizons for any foreign investment. Within this rich context I offer a typology of four existing models or "ecologies" for managing foreign investment-the Other, the Guest, the Colonizer, and the Rights-Holder-and suggest how a truly sustainable law of foreign investment requires new ecologies, such as the Neighbor and the Citizen, and a new relational permaculture sensibility. This may help move us towards a foreign investment law that recognizes foreign investment as relational, inclusive, even transformative, but still risky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]