Rule Of Law And Transition To A Market Economy

Proceedings from a colloquium

A challenging and provocative book that contests the liberal assumption that the rule of law will go hand in hand with a transition to market-based economies and even democracy in East Asia. Using case studies from Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam, the authors argue that the rule of law is in fact more likely to provide political elites with the means closely to control civil society. It is essential, therefore, to locate conceptions of judicial independence and the rule of law more generally within the ideological vocabulary of the state.

"How does the lack of legitimacy of property rights affect the dynamics of the creation of the rule of law? The authors investigate the demand for the rule of law in post-Communist economies after privatization under the assumption that theft is possible, that those who have "stolen" assets cannot be fully protected under a change in the legal regime towards rule of law, and that the number of agents with control rights over assets is large. They show that a demand for broadly beneficial legal reform may not emerge because the expectation of weak legal institutions increases the expected relative return to stripping assets, and strippers may gain from a weak and corrupt state. The outcome can be inefficient even from the narrow perspective of the asset-strippers."

November 1995 Three things are essential to implement decentralized legal frameworks in any setting: reasonable laws, adequate institutions, and market-oriented incentives. The problem in transition economies is that all three must to a large extent be built from scratch. The question to ask at any point in time is not whether there is rule of law, but whether the country is moving in the right direction along all three dimensions. Implementing decentralized legal frameworks requires reasonable laws, adequate institutions, and market-oriented incentives. All three must exist together. Laws or institutions without each other or without a supportive framework of incentives are likely to lie dormant, while incentives by themselves will be frustrated without a reasonable legal framework and institutions to support and enforce them. Developing any of these elements is a major challenge, and progress along all three takes time. In transition economies, not only must new laws be drafted (a daunting task yet perhaps the easiest of the three) but they must be accompanied by the growth of supportive institutions (including formal judicial institutions and the watchdog institutions that we almost take for granted in advanced market economies). And they must be accompanied by economic reforms -- whether privatization (particularly with outside owners) or banking reforms -- that separate actors from the state and reinforce market-based incentives. Gray and Hendley use two case studies -- Hungarian bankruptcy law and Russian company law -- to illustrate the interaction of these three elements in practice. These cases illustrate their general view that Central Europe is somewhat further along on all three dimensions than Russia. Russia is not advanced in the development of either laws or institutions, among other reasons because it lacks Hungary's pre-war legacy of a legal tradition (Russia having never been a society or an economy ruled fundamentally by law) and because it launched economic reform much later. As for incentives, in both countries relevant actors exert weaker demand for proper implementation of the laws on the books -- weaker demand that there be stable rules of the game -- than one would expect in more mature market economies. The cases belie any simplistic notion that the rule of law can be mechanically dictated from above. Top-down reform of bankruptcy law in Hungary appears to have been at least marginally successful in changing expectations and behavior, partly because it stimulated the growth of new supporting institutions. It might have been more successful if other areas of government policy had created more complementary incentives, particularly in banks. Top-down reform of company law in Russia has had little impact to date on either institutional development or firm behavior. This paper -- a product of the Transition Economics Division, Policy Research Department -- was prepared for the John M. Olin Lecture Series at Harvard University.

In the last decade, market-centered economic reforms have been implemented in a wide range of developing and transitional countries under the auspices of the international financial institutions. Whether or not they deliver the promised prosperity, they appear to be associated with widening economic inequality as well as disadvantage for particular social groups, among them women and workers. Recharacterizing Restructuring argues that such effects are neither temporary nor accidental. Instead, efforts to promote growth through greater efficiency inevitably engage distributive concerns. Change in the status of different groups is connected to the process of legal and institutional reform. Part I analyzes the place of law and institutional reform in current economic restructuring policies. Through post-realist legal analysis and institutional economics, it discusses the role of background legal rules in the allocation of resources and power among different groups. Part II traces how disadvantage might result for women in the course of economic reform, through an analysis of the World Bank's proposals for states in transition from plan to market economies. It considers such foundational issues as the place of unpaid work in economic activity, as well as the gendered nature of proposals to re-organize productive activity and the role of the state.

Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law is a collection of original research on the rule of law from a panel of leading economists, political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists and historians. The chapters critically analyze the meaning and foundations of the rule of law and its relationship to economic and democratic development, challenging many of the underlying assumptions guiding the burgeoning field of rule of law development. The combination of jurisprudential, quantitative, historical/comparative, and theoretical analyses seeks to chart a new course in scholarship on the rule of law: the volume as a whole takes seriously the role of law in pursuing global justice, while confronting the complexity of instituting the rule of law and delivering its promised benefits. Written for scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers, Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law offers a unique combination of jurisprudential and empirical research that will be provocative and relevant to those who are attempting to understand and advance the rule of law globally. The chapters progress from broad questions regarding current rule of development efforts and the concept of rule of law to more specific issues pertaining to economic and democratic development. Specific countries, such as China, India, and seventeenth century England and the Netherlands, serve as case studies in some chapters, while broad global surveys feature in other chapters. Indeed, this impressive scope of research ushers in the next generation of scholarship in this area.

Poland is rapidly developing a reasonable legal framework to support its transition to a market economy. Yet legal practice lags behind. Precedent and expertise must be built through training and experience.