ABSTRACT
How does the sophisticated local business community learn to use new legal structures resulting from donor-supported rule of law (ROL) work in developing countries? Do they adopt them because the rule of law is part of the general environment (or will theoretically increasingly become so)? Or do they need to see some short-term personal or business advantage and approach things in an instrumental sense? What does it mean if private sector adoption of the rule of law is chiefly an instrumental exercise (the “what’s in it for me” question), rather than being motivated by abstract principles or the concept that it represents their government’s or society’s (new) official policy? How does this bear on our “chicken or egg” question, namely whether changing law changes behavior in terms of social engineering, versus the idea that social views have to change before legal changes can be introduced to support the new consensus (except here we are talking more about the use of new institutional structures, rather than following new substantive standards1)? And for commercial law reform, is the proper “society” even the business community (domestic or foreign investors), or the local public at large?
