Law has re-emerged onto the international development agenda. What is driving this renewed interest? How do legal processes and legal institutions affect the everyday lives of poor and excluded people?

A recent issue of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin is dedicated to examining these questions through a number of articles by academics, development practitioners and legal reformers. The bulletin covers three themes: the nature of law and legal pluralism, protecting land and property rights, and legal institutions and reform and access to justice.

Why the renewed interest in the role of law in development? Four reasons are suggested:

• 'Good governance' policies advocated by the international donor community, following the failure of the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s, see reform of the state and its relations with society as key elements in promoting market-led growth.
• Insofar as good governance means more accountable and transparent government, more legitimate and effective legal institutions are needed to protect citizen's rights, limit actions of corrupt or oppressive state officials, and protect the livelihoods of the poor and excluded.
• In spite of the diversity of the large number of new democracies that have emerged since the 1980s, there is new concern with the legally defined concept of 'citizenship', seen as crucial for the operation of any effective democracy.
• Rising levels of crime, civil disorder and violence, and the exacerbation of political conflict in many new democracies, have put questions of policing, access to justice and judicial reform near the top of many national political agendas.

Beyond a concern with law simply as an enabling framework for commerce and investment, legal processes and legal institutions affect people in their everyday lives. The content and the administration of land law, family law, labour law and the law of negligence impact on the security with which poor people can hold and use assets such as land or natural resources, obtain a fair price for their labour, or develop small business opportunities. A corrupt and ineffective judicial system can have a deeply detrimental effect on the security of everyday life and on citizens' protection from arbitrary state action. Not only is the legal system an aspect of power relations among (unequal) individuals and groups, it can shape how they invest their social capital in organisations or in political action.

The Bulletin articles identify a number of key points in the current debate on how to develop more effective, accessible and legitimate legal systems which will protect and enhance the life chances of ordinary people across the developing world. These are:

• A deeper understanding of the multiplicity of non-state regulatory orders and their relationship to state law is required before going further into the realms of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and community-based law.
• More research is needed on how legal processes affect people's everyday lives and how people experience and perceive these processes.
• If these perceptions and processes are better understood then relevant policies for reforming the most main points of contact between citizens and the state - the local courts, police and regulatory officials - can be developed.

Source(s):
‘Making law matter: rules, rights and security in the lives of the poor', IDS Bulletin 32/1, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, edited by Richard Crook and Peter Houtzager January 2001

id21 Research Highlight: 26 February 2002

Further Information:
Richard Crook / Peter Houtzager
Institute of Development Studies (IDS)
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 678276
Fax: +44 (0) 1273 621202 / 691647
Contact the contributor: r.crook@ids.ac.uk

Contact the contributor: p.houtzager@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Other related links:
'Dispelling myths: land and property in Africa'

Eldis provides further links to Law

IOG is a research organisation focusing on the promotion of effective governance