Law and governance

Law and governance focuses on the role of law and legal processes in developing governmental institutions and policies that are both accountable to citizens and promote economic growth and development. 

Although there is agreement that the ‘rule of law’ (the principle that government should act both through law and according to law) ought to be the cornerstone of any democracy, in practice this poses significant conceptual challenges for development interventions. Globalisation and privatisation have meant that states have become increasingly interconnected with the private sector as both a regulator and, particularly in the case of public private partnerships, as a collaborator. This relationship brings a new challenge in the area of regulation and regulatory reform. However, despite this new challenge a continuing focus of law and governance is the need for legal accountability mechanisms that provide meaningful access to justice for citizens to challenge both the actions of the state and of private actors.

The rule of law

Following the Law and Development movement of the 1960s, research into this area moved away from the ‘transplantation’ of Western legal systems to developing countries and more on understanding the mechanisms that create social and legal stability. When applied beyond the formal legal conception, the rule of law is difficult to define. Development interventions designed to promote it have been subject to much criticism and its privileged position as a necessary pre-condition for economic growth is increasingly contested. Contemporary work on the rule of law critiques the usefulness of such an abstract concept in development practice whilst at the same time continuing to further our understanding of the relationship between law and economic and social development. Recommended reading...

Regulation

The success of regulatory reforms has been uneven and the lessons from history have shown that there is no ‘one size fits all’ model. Current debates focus on the comparability and measurement of regulatory reforms and how best to craft the relationship between the state and private sector in developing countries. The recommended readings below introduce this topic.  Recommended reading...

Access to justice

Despite an increased academic focus on customary laws and informal institutions, the formal, institutionalised mechanisms of courts and tribunals remain important avenues of accountability particularly when seeking to challenge state action. The current debates on access to justice focus not only on top down reforms of the legal sector but also on the way in which access to the justice system is linked to both poverty reduction and economic and social development. Recommended reading...