Amanda Perry-Kessaris

The Relationship between Legal Systems and Economic Development: Integrating Economic and Cultural Approaches

This paper seeks to demonstrate the need to bridge the gap between the economic and culture-based approaches to two issues which are fundamental to the debate over the relationship between legal reform and economic development: (a) the relative importance which economic actors around the world place on the legal system and (b) the core components of an effective legal system, as defined by those economic actors. It first outlines the major tenets of current economic legal reform policy, focusing on its underlying assumption that the perceptions and expectations of economic actors around the world do not vary significantly. Data from Geert Hofstedes study of variance in cultural values are then analysed in order to demonstrate how cultural values might affect private sector perceptions and expectations of legal systems as supporters of material progress. It concludes that there is a clear need for a more interdisciplinary approach to the debate over the relationship between legal reform and economic development, and the potential variance in private sector perceptions and expectations of legal systems in particular. Such an approach might be initiated through a systematic integration of existing data and theory from each discipline, reinforced by a new multi-country survey.This paper seeks to demonstrate the need to bridge the gap between the economic and culture-based approaches to two issues which are fundamental to the debate over the relationship between legal reform and economic development: (a) the relative importance which economic actors around the world place on the legal system and (b) the core components of an effective legal system, as defined by those economic actors. It first outlines the major tenets of current economic legal reform policy, focusing on its underlying assumption that the perceptions and expectations of economic actors around the world do not vary significantly. Data from Geert Hofstede’s study of variance in cultural values are then analysed in order to demonstrate how cultural values might affect private sector perceptions and expectations of legal systems as supporters of material progress. It concludes that there is a clear need for a more interdisciplinary approach to the debate over the relationship between legal reform and economic development, and the potential variance in private sector perceptions and expectations of legal systems in particular. Such an approach might be initiated through a systematic integration of existing data and theory from each discipline, reinforced by a new multi-country survey.

Prepare your indicators: Economics imperialism on the shores of law and development

This article explores the influence of economics on the demand for, and deployment of, indicators in the context of the World Banks investment climate campaign. This campaign is characterised by an emphasis on marketisation, mathematisation and quantification, which are respectively the normative, analytical and empirical approaches of choice in mainstream economics. The article concludes that economics generally, and indicators in particular, have brought a certain discipline and energy to the field of law and development. But this ‘progress’ has often been at the expense of non-economic values and interests, and even of our ability to mourn their loss.

Truth and Consequences in Rule of Law: Inferences, Attribution and Evaluation

AbstractBillions of dollars are spent on legal development every year, but its effectiveness continues to be questioned. Many donors have responded to this internal and external critique by developing monitoring and evaluating systems. This article problematizes the tendency of conventional modes of evaluation to assume a link between the outcomes of individual projects (the ‘truth’ of rule of law) and the fulfillment of overarching program goals (the ‘consequences’). We argue that examining this assumed link is of particular importance as rule of law projects take place within a host of simultaneous political and social changes; are time consuming and unpredictable and have multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives. Our analysis of four recent rule of law projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America exposes the inability of conventional evaluations to accommodate such complexities. We demonstrate how, by contrast, robust empirical research reveals important truths about the disparity between the actual, intended and unintended consequences of legal development projects.

Anemos‐Ity, Apatheia, Enthousiasmos: An Economic Sociology of Law and Wind Farm Development in Cyprus

This piece sketches ‘an’ economic sociology of law: one possible approach, in relation to one case study of wind farm development in Cyprus. Carbon emissions are a global threat to which wind farms may offer something of a solution. But wind farms can also pose local threats. So they tend to produce conflicts on different levels of social life: action, interaction, regime, and rationality. As such they are ill�?suited to exploration through law or economics, and ideally suited to exploration through economic sociology of law. The approach set out in this article enables social life of all levels, intensities, and types (including the economic) to be placed on the same analytical page. What emerges is a most human story of animosity, apathy, and enthusiasm in which law acts variously as means, obstacle, and irrelevance.

The re-co-construction of legitimacy of/through the Doing Business indicators

The present article argues that the Doing Business indicators, their legitimacy (their ability to be defended through some logic or justification arising from standards), and the wider notions of legitimacy (the standards) that they promulgate are all best understood as social, or better still, ‘econosociolegal’ constructions. It tracks their, primarily post-financial crisis, re-co-construction within and beyond the World Bank from servant of the private sector and discipliner of states, to something approaching social champion. But it warns that the perceptions of legitimacy that have been generated by those indicators may well linger.