The Sovereign’s Bond
In today's tense geopoltical envoronment, this book reinterprets sovereign risk as a question of institutional credibility within contemporary international law. Combining law, political economy, and high-level policy insight, it explores how geoeconomic instruments of governance are reshaping the relationship between the sovereign and the investor and how states and businesses need to navigate uncertainty in today‘s multipolar global economy.
This timely monograph comes amid escalating United States-China rivalry, technological decoupling, and polycentric power shifts. It reframes sovereign risk not as mere solvency but as institutional credibility—investors’ confidence in a state’s willingness to honor self-induced expectations over fiscal capacity alone. This book examines how international investment regimes transform political uncertainties into adjudicatory accountability, compelling compensation for breaches while preserving regulatory space. Key doctrinal insights focus on proportionality, legitimate expectations, and the necessity defense in international law.
Regulatory tools for managing foreign investment risk, artificial intelligence, sanctions, export controls, data sovereignty, and forced labor measures demonstrate how sovereign risk increasingly emerges through incremental policy changes. Blending jurisprudence, syncretic and interdisciplinary thinking, and practical frameworks, this monograph recounts how businesses and institutions embed sovereign-risk management. This book is highly relevant for scholars, practitioners, businesses, and policymakers interested in international investment law, economic statecraft, trade, and national security.
Sohan Dasgupta, JD, PhD, is a legal scholar, attorney, and former senior U.S. Government official with deep expertise in international investment law, economic law, trade policy, national security, and economic statecraft. He served as Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, during which he led efforts on Foreign Investment Risk Management (including CFIUS coordination), Team Telecom, ICTS restrictions, supply chains, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, trade, forced labor, and adjacent issues. Dr. Dasgupta also led the Millennium Challenge Corporation and was a partner at premier U.S. law firms, focusing on litigation, international arbitration, regulatory compliance, and investigations. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. Dr. Dasgupta earned his PhD in international trade and arbitration law from the University of Cambridge, MSc from the University of Oxford, BA from Columbia University, and JD (Order of the Coif—top 10% of his class) from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. Dr. Dasgupta has published articles in various law reviews and top legal industry publications; and frequently speaks at various congresses and parliaments regarding international law, foreign policy, economic statecraft, and the Free World’s imperatives.