ABSTRACT
A sound understanding of the effects of legal pluralism management helps to assess the relevance or soundness of the premises that guide actors’ practices and choices. Drawing from the data gathered in all the regions studied (Africa, Canada, Central Europe, and the South Pacific), this chapter discusses the effects on legal systems and individuals of the processes deployed to manage legal pluralism (i.e., reception, withdrawal, imitation, and endogenous modulation). However, the effects of legal pluralism management can be measured only insofar as outcomes of non-management are apprehended. Thus, the author first considers the consequences of indifference between co-existing legal systems on individuals and on the systems themselves. The chief consequences on systems are competition and duplication while individuals find themselves in a complex legal landscape that can be either perilous or advantageous. Strategies of inter-systemic mobility can be devised but they are often thwarted. The author then examines the effects of management processes and strategies on both managing systems and systems of reference, as well as on individuals. He shows that while some processes lead to increased legal complexity others favour normative convergence between systems. Only withdrawal reduces competition and duplication. Individual strategic law-shopping often remains possible but may be less attractive when management processes lead to permissive or repressive convergence.
