In 1989, starting in Poland and spreading quickly throughout Central and Eastern Europe, European communism imploded. In some places new states were born, in others old ones re-established their independence. In all there was talk of ‘transition’ to something very different, something at the same time very new and very old.

20 years on, a lot has changed. Much that seemed revolutionary then seems old hat now. And the attempt to cut and paste forms, structures, and successes from ‘normal’ societies, as the West was known in the East, has turned out to be a far from conservative enterprise, not simple, and not always popular. Indeed, homegrown conservatives have come to be suspicious of it, often accusing their opponents – those devoted to democracy, capitalism and the rule of law, for example – of untraditional and unforgivable radicalism. The suspicion is general, encompassing many ideals and practices believed to be alien imports. It is most vocally directed against democracy and capitalism. However it has also reached – less perhaps as rejection in principle than disappointment in practice – that animating ideal which has had such a renaissance since the collapse of communism and in connection with it: the rule of law.

For this special issue, six distinguished students of post-communism were asked to reflect on the fate of the rule of law in areas that they knew best; of course they could stray where they felt necessary. Balcerowicz focused primarily on the economy, Hendley on Russian courts, Ganev on east European constitutional and regular courts, Skąpska on privatisation, Czarnota on ‘transitional justice’ or ‘dealing with the past,’ Přibáň on the implications of a ‘return to Europe’ both as ambition and achievement.

Part of the US project for Iraq following its invasion was the reconstruction of the Iraqi justice system. Many projects, both military and civil were launched in support of this goal with the intention of enhancing the rule of law. Based on seven month's experience on one such project in Iraq, the author discusses the various tensions, constraints and confusions in these reconstruction projects in the justice sector. Overall there was an absence of harmonization and coordination and these operated to the detriment of the Iraqi system. In the field of rule of law programs, aid providers generally seek to establish a western style rule oriented system similar to those prevailing in their own countries but seem unaware of how to best bring about this change. In the author's experience, this process was exemplified in Iraq. An alternative approach to justice reconstruction is suggested that would be holistic and strategic, based on local knowledge and practice, and one that incorporates both top down and bottom up knowledge.

We embed a critique of the respective strengths and weaknesses of policy initiatives to ‘build the rule of law’ within the broader literature on political settlements and developmental states, thereby creating a foundation for an alternative framework that takes politics and the legitimacy of change processes seriously. Thus far the dominant terms of debate have been between those advocating or resisting the replication of legal ‘forms’ (i.e., what modern legal institutions, statutes and procedures ‘look like’, such as constitutions) via large, rapid, imported technocratic interventions, and those pushing instead for a focus on enhancing a prevailing legal system's ‘functionality’ (what the existing system actually ‘does’) via a series of local level legal empowerment programs or attempts to redefine state-society relations by adjusting legal configurations. We argue for the inclusion of a third dimension, namely one encompassing procedural legitimacy and equitable contestation as part of the change process.

In 2010, the World Bank and the Department for International Development (DFID) funded and orchestrated an initiative to develop a tool to monitor corruption performance in Uganda on an ongoing basis. By basing operations in a local university-based research center and engaging the Inspectorate General of Government to manage the project, the tool is becoming the responsibility of national stakeholders, including the government. The local university research center is working with government to improve government collection of sectoral and functional anti-corruption data. In addition, evidence-based international corruption data has been incorporated into the public discussion on corruption. Donors continue to play an important role – funding the project launch, and providing ongoing guidance and support to engage executive agencies, Parliament, NGOs, and the media. The project has had some positive and unexpected results. While the project remains in early stages, there are signs that this gradual, data-driven approach is deepening the public dialogue on corruption and creating an important consensus for anti-corruption reform.

The recent emphasis placed on anti-corruption laws as means of combatting corruption in low and middle-income countries reflects a great deal of optimism about the ability of law to effect social change. The more general literature on law and development suggests several reasons for skepticism on this front: the risk that legal institutions will be captured by powerful interests; the possibility that law plays only a limited role as a means of social control; and, in the case of transnational law, the limited power, will, knowledge, and legitimacy of foreign actors. This essay examines the extent to which these concerns provide grounds for skepticism about the potential efficacy of anti-corruption law.

This paper develops a framework and some hypotheses regarding the impact of local- level, informal legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a set of stylized differences between formal and informal legal systems, identifies the pathways through which formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of informal legal institutions on economic outcomes, and looks at extant case studies to examine the plausibility of the arguments presented. The paper concludes that local-level, informal legal institutions can support social substitutes for the enforcement of contracts, although these substitutes tend to be limited in range and scale; they are flexible and could conceivably be adapted to serve the interests of the poor and marginalized if supportive organizational and social resources could be brought to support the legal claims of the disempowered; and they are more likely to support personal integrity rights than the positive liberties that are also constitutive of development as freedom.

Justice sector reform and access to justice initiatives in developing countries are often pre-occupied with addressing challenges related to proximity of judicial institutions, costs of filing cases, and technical deficiencies in the system. One of the major obstacles, however, for a well-functioning rule of law can be paradigmatic contradictions between formal laws, judicial processes and local understandings of justice. In the arid north of Kenya, for example, pastoralist societies adhere to their own norms delivering justice. Indigenous means of conflict resolution have proven to genuinely reconcile and pacify society, even in serious criminal offences. Problematic is that local socio-political realities are much stronger than state institutions. Government authorities have been compelled to work with local solutionsin order to pacify the region. This sounds an alarm for the formal justice sector of the failure of its main mission – the maintenance of peace in society. If laws and judicial processes do not become increasingly responsive to socio-cultural contexts, justice sector institutions run risk of rendering themselves redundant.

The field of law and development has been a recognizable one for approximately a half-century. However, evaluations of the success of the law and development endeavor appear overwhelmingly negative. Failure of previous efforts of law and development do not appear to be due to a lack of either talent or money. Some of the world's best legal talent has been brought to bear on the problems, and very large sums of money have been spent. The failure appears rather to have been conceptual, as suggested by the need for an alternative theory. So some critical consideration appears necessary of the main underlying concepts which have driven law and development projects. Subsequent attention will be given to an alternative theory, that of sustainable diversity in law. The rule of law has historically been a useful concept in some parts of the world; it could well be replaced by the rule of laws.

Many in the West believe that sharia and rule of law as defined by international law are hard to reconcile. In his think piece, Otto argues that this view ignores developments and trends in many Muslim countries which point to a gradual rapprochement between sharia and rule of law. He also points out that many Western observers are insensitive to the fact that rule of law requirements can be met in non-Western ways. In this connection, Otto reminds his readers of Van Vollenhoven's monumental effort to map out and understand Indonesian adatrecht against the background of a Dutch colonial administration that was arrogant, incompetent and indifferent with respect to local laws and sharia. Otto concludes his piece by formulating an ambitious research-agenda for the Hague Journal on the Rule of Law with respect to rule of law and sharia.

Whilst the books reviewed here explicitly acknowledge that our understanding of the meaning and function of the rule of law remains limited, they certainly constitute progress in scholarship on the idea. In policy-making, as Heckman and Nelson put it ‘we continue to see value in pursuing a rule of law framework’ (p 13 Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law). By providing a range of critical insights into the rule of law in these two volumes, the editors both give us access to key debates in the field in accessible form and also ensure that the ideas explored by the authors will shape future research on the rule of law

The central question to be addressed in this article is: what does this empirical evidence tell us about the nature and effectiveness of judicial reform in Asia?

This case study of the judicial reform program of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) experience 1990-2007 is framed within the global context of substantial growth, underwhelming results, and continuing evolution of approach in an ongoing search for success.

The case study marshals and evaluates a substantial body of new evidence from Asia which has been remarkably under-studied in the academic discourse. This body of experience contributes timely evidence of practice which is significant in supporting a number of key propositions. First, it reveals the still evolving nature of the judicial reform enterprise. Second, it demonstrates that ADB has created some ‘results’. Third, it remains difficult to find any evidence of ‘success’ owing to the continuing conceptual fuzziness in the purpose and goals of endeavor, and the continuing lack of systematic monitoring and evaluation. Fourth, there are some tentative indications of an emerging capacity to demonstrate developmental effectiveness. While this evidence generally conforms to the global literature, the recency of endeavor in this region reveals a dynamic process of evolution, and highlights the incubation of a potentially paradigmatic shift in reform approach.

This article explores the complex empirical landscape of justice and security provision in post-war Mozambique, and its political dynamics. It scrutinises the formal policy framework, which today recognises legal pluralism. The current legislation not only fails to fully recognise the de facto role played by non-state providers, but also to acknowledge the various layers of informal interaction and competition that in practice occur between these and official state institutions. There are political reasons for this. Justice and security provision constitute a minefield of power interests and overlapping claims to authority, which have deep historical roots. State officials and the national government fear losing power if non-state actors are given clear rights and mandates. Unclear legislation also eases political instrumentalisation by politicians and power-holders. The risk is that justice and security provision becomes more about politics than about problem solving and access to justice.

Livingston Armytage has news for the international aid community, most of it bad. Through extensive analysis, he confirms a chorus of critics who find little to show for hundreds of millions of dollars spent on judicial reform over the past two decades. He does not conclude that we have necessarily failed in our endeavors - although this does seem likely - but rather that we simply do not know if we are successful. Drawing on his insider experience as a reformer and reform evaluator, he suggests three reasons for this confusion: (1) we don't know what we're doing, both as a matter of goals and performance; (2) we don't know how to measure what we're doing; and (3) we usually don't bother to measure anyway, so we can't know what we're doing.

In 2008, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP), chaired by Madeleine K. Albright and Hernando de Soto, published its report Making the Law Work for Everyone. In this report, the CLEP argues ‘… that four billion people around the world are robbed of the chance to better their lives and climb out of poverty, because they are excluded from the rule of law’. The CLEP also develops ‘… a comprehensive agenda for legal empowerment encompassing four pillars that must be central in national and international efforts to give the poor protection and opportunities…: access to justice and the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights’. In this special section, which is edited and introduced by Stephen Golub, the idea of legal empowerment of the poor in general, and the report in particular, is discussed by Dan Banik, Julio Faundez, Jan Michiel Otto and Matthew Stephens.

This article argues for an integrated, political and pragmatic approach to justice and security development as one of the key objectives of effective international support to peace building and state building in conflict-affected and fragile states. Developments since the 1990s suggest that different actors and communities have started to work on the same issues from different angles and with – perceived – different mandates. As a result, important parts of the debate on how to deal with security system reform (SSR), justice reform and the rule of law seem somewhat stuck in conceptual arguments. This article suggests moving away from such debates and instead to focus on what such justice and security engagements are meant to achieve, for whom, and which general approaches are likely to provide most added value. It argues that results require political focus, long-term processes and need to be in tune with local elite interests – whilst pursuing the aim of gradually helping to improve delivery of justice and security as basic services for all, to appropriate local standards. External and domestic objectives require careful balancing, creative compromises and strong incentives. The article also outlines a number of recurrent challenges to effective programming and suggests some ideas for improvement to achieve better results and more value for money.

Post-conflict governance poses particular challenges to governments and foreign assistance providers. We focus on the question of how – and whether – the rule of law is reconstituted in the wake of civil conflict. We find evidence that the state of the rule of law prior to and during a conflict substantially predicts the reconstitution of the rule of law post conflict. We further find that foreign intervention has a positive influence on the rule of law post conflict and that wars which end with a truth or settlement are associated with better rule of law post conflict than those resolved through victories by either government or rebel forces.

The rule of law has become the common sense of contemporary global politics. In this article I explore whether the earliest recorded deliberations on the rule of law, those found in political debates in Ancient Greece, have any salience for contemporary discussions of the norm. The article briefly maps historical jurisprudential debates about the rule of law in Greece (and Athens especially) to suggest that no sooner were laws developed to shape society so consideration also turned to how the rule of law might be understood and defined. Moreover, the debates in Athens raise a number of issues, linked most clearly to a procedural perception of the rule of law's contours that can be identified (equally) in debates about the norm in the new millennium. The lesson that these debates prompt is that while the rule of law and democracy may be linked, it is not necessary for either to be well developed (approaching current liberal standards) for progressive debates to be engendered about the further development of a just rule of law.

Over the last two decades, there has been a proliferation of indicators designed to measure and quantify the delivery of justice services. This paper describes the range of justice system indicator instruments that are currently in use and the data sources and measures that they employ. The authors identify 53 instruments assessing various aspects of the rule of law and a subset of 31 instruments that specifically address the operation of law enforcement agencies, judicial systems, corrections, and informal justice mechanisms. This review, conducted for the United Nations as part of the Rule of Law Indicators Project, considers the strengths and shortcomings of existing justice indicators in the light of common challenges facing countries recovering from conflict, including: political instability, problems of legitimacy and corruption; safety and security; and, challenges relating to capacity and infrastructure. We conclude with suggestions for supplementing existing indicators to develop measures that can inform efforts to enhance the rule of law in post-conflict settings.