ABSTRACT
Ever since I first read the above aperçu I have been thinking of it in relation to lawrelated planning and analysis of social and economic change in developing countries.1 Law-related development planning-and there is little development policy and implementation which does not involve law-but also large parts of what goes under the name of development theory, seem to prove the above statement. The idea of legal engineering, of achieving social and economic change through government law, still ranks foremost in the arsenal of development techniques. Law, as ‘desired situation projected into the future’ (F.von Benda-Beckmann 1983a), is used as a magic charm. The law-maker seeks to capture desired economic or social conditions, and the practice supposed to lead towards them, in normative terms, and leaves the rest to law enforcement, or expressed more generally, to the implementation of policy.2
