Reorienting International Economic Law for the Digital Economy: Towards Digital Development

This open access book examines the evolving role of international economic law in addressing two interrelated challenges of the 21st century: enabling digital development and bridging the digital divide.

The rapid digitalisation of the economy has generated significant challenges, including a deepening global digital and data divide and a persistent lack of inclusive digital development. Confronting these challenges head on, this pioneering book brings together experts across different legal subfields, geographies, and disciplines to examine the role and relevance of international economic law in bridging the global digital divide and enabling digital development, particularly from the perspective of the Global South.

The contributions are anchored in a distinctive analytical framework that traces future directions through which international economic law interacts with digital development, demonstrating how it may function as a constraint, fade into irrelevance, or eventually act as an enabler. The chapters focus on a broad range of areas, including international trade, investment, tax, development, competition, finance and related regulatory and policy domains; they consider multilateral, regional, and plurilateral frameworks; and draw on a plurality of perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The authors employ a wide range of methodological approaches to address issues such as digital sovereignty and digital industrial policy, cross-border data flows and digital global value chains, competition in data markets, AI governance, financial inclusion, and the sustainability-digitalisation nexus.

This book speaks to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in international economic law, development studies, and technology law who seek theoretical and pragmatic pathways for reorienting international economic law as a tool for equitable, sustainable, and meaningful digital development.