ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the case of centrality of law in policy processes in the Global South. The Global North, where public policy as a discipline originated and flourished, relied upon political competition (through democracy) and market forces (through capitalism) to bring order to the public sphere. When these arrangements normalize the infringements on people’s lives, the citizens are provided with a justiciable constitutional framework. Though both law and policy have the mandate of the constitution, neither of them is monolithic. Distinct schools within the disciplines of law and policy have different approaches when they take the constitutional mandate to deal with public problems. Yet, their approaches as well as reasoning for decision making, when public problems are addressed, are contrastingly different. While these generic principles are true both in the Global North and Global South, when the interface of law and policy are examined, specific contextual concerns make law central in the Global South. These are: post-colonial state formation (which places the constitution making as the epochal moment of social contract); imperfect institutions (which lead citizens to look up to the court as the finality for service delivery); flawed political competition yielding democratic process less effective to respond to public problems; and power distance between executive and citizens (requiring accountability tools to have legal backing). Having recognized these reasons that make law inseparable form policy, we undertake an institutional mapping where the synergy between these two domains could be strengthened.
