ABSTRACT
With the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the world experienced a boom in legal assistance projects. Governments, private foundations, international organisations, consultancies and law firms started to invest millions of dollars and euros in legal assistance projects. American lawyers were prompt to move into the international arena, using the rule of law to open up markets, restructuring power hierarchies, deconstructing state bureaucracies and setting up institutions necessary to develop and maintain new forms of state power and market economy.1 Drawing on the prestige of law, they managed to invent and export law, legal institutions and specific universals of governance to Eastern Europe, and – maybe more importantly – to set up the rules of the game for individuals, institutions and governments that came into the field later. The European Union – which became the other major institutional player in the field – joined in only when the initial rules had already been established. In doing so, it counteracted the growing dominance of U.S. lawyers. In the EU, this reaction was produced within and legitimised through the state in contrast to the U.S., where the production was born out of private initiatives. The grand official history of the EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe hides a complex struggle between two super powers – the EU and the U.S. – over forms of state power, law and legal capacity building. Focusing on the social genesis behind legal assistance programmes originating
in the U.S. and EU, this chapter illustrates two different ways of exporting law, expertise and state power. It examines how the programmes in the U.S. and EU developed differently. In the U.S. the programmes were to a large extent based on private initiative and were promoted by private lawyers whereas the European assistance developed within the administrative field of the EU, namely in the EU Commission. The two different ‘origins’ of the programmes might explain the foci of the programmes. Law firms, think tanks, private organisations and other institutions outside the state promoted law that could legitimise the (minimal) state or programmes could be designed to promote law and changes within the state.2 The chapter exemplifies how lawyers use law to export various models of the state, and it exemplifies moreover the competition between the two large powers taking place in Eastern Europe.
