ABSTRACT
In the wake of post-war decolonisation, many developing countries pursued trade and industrial policies based on import substitution industrialisation and high tariff barriers. The state, many development economists agreed, could play a constructive role in determining the allocation of resources and investment in the economy so as to promote economic growth.3 In line with this view, some legal experts, starting in the 1960s and predominantly in the US, believed law could be used as a tool to empower the state and facilitate its exercise of macroeconomic control.4 This early Law and Development movement, supported by the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), undertook law reform projects – which in practice amounted to the transplant of US legal institutions – primarily in Latin America and Africa.5
