The legal protection shielding a state from prosecution before the courts, rendering the insurer's recourse illusory after indemnity.
Sovereign immunity shields the state from ordinary prosecution, in its own jurisdictions and on its own soil. It turns the political risk insurer's recovery into an exercise depending less on law than on the balance of power. This is why the strongest guarantees are not those of the best-capitalized carriers, but those of the most politically formidable guarantors, the ones a state hesitates to make a lasting enemy of. The quality of recourse is thus measured in diplomatic power, and two policies at the same price, from two carriers with the same funds, are worth different amounts according to whether one can mobilize diplomatic pressure and the other cannot.
The multilateral guarantee works not because it will pay, but because a state expropriating a covered investor would shut itself out of international finance for a generation, a deterrence sovereign immunity makes necessary.
immunité de juridiction, immunité d'exécution