ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the actions of State and non-State agents and of individuals in legal pluralism contexts. More specifically, it aims to identify the springs of actions of persons involved in a multijural environment and the context in which those actions are deployed. A number of factors specific to a multijural universe, that is, factors of instability and mutability, of cognition, and of capacity, circumscribe these actions and define the range of possibilities available to all the actors who position themselves within it. In such an environment, the freedom of individuals to choose and act is never unlimited, whoever they may be. The instability and mutability of a specific pluralist situation, the actors’ perceptions of their own and another’s system, and the legitimacy and capacity of each of the co-existing legal systems all directly influence why and how actors choose to act. As this chapter will try to demonstrate, the vitality of each of the systems at issue – that is to say, their legitimacy in the eyes of the population and their ability to broadcast their authority effectively – is the factor that most directly influences the actions of system agents and individuals in a context of legal pluralism.
