2014 Law and Development Conference

2014 Law and Development Conference, Manchester: “Law, Institution, and Development”

The Law and Development Institute (LDI, www.lawanddevelopment.net) holds its fifth annual law and development conference on the 16th of May, 2014, at Manchester Conference Centre (http://www.manchesterconferencecentre.co.uk).

The conference will address the current issues in law and development studies, including rule of law initiatives, institutional “bypass” as a means for institutional reform, law and finance in emerging market, law and development dimension for entrepreneurship, and rising issues with the legal origins theory, international taxation, and law and civil stability in today’s corporate society.

The conference will be comprised of two panels featuring presentations by senior and rising scholars from Europe, North America, and Asia, including Prof. Y.S. Lee (The Law and Development Institute), Prof. Mariana Prado (University of Toronto), Prof. Soo Hee Lee (University of Kent), Dr. Helen Chen (Newcastle University), Mr. Alessandro Romano (Erasmus University), Mr. Ajay Kumar (University of Manchester), and Ms. Lucy Johnson (Public Interest Advocate). Panel discussions and Q&A sessions will follow the panel presentations. Audience will be invited to participate in Q&A sessions.

Attendance is free, but the seating is limited, so we ask all attendants to confirm attendance by sending a confirmation email to us at info@lawanddevelopment.net as soon as possible, latest by the 11th of May. We also accept email inquires (info@lawanddevelopment.net).

Conference Schedule & Presentations

Date: 16th of May, 2014
Venue: Manchester Conference Centre, Conference Room 7 (for location:http://www.manchesterconferencecentre.co.uk/contact/location)

1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Registration

1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Opening remark by Prof Y.S. Lee, Director of the Law and Development Institute & Keynote presentation

“Rule of Law and Development”

Rule of law” has been cited as an important component for successful economic and social development. Rule of law is also advocated as an objective, not just as a means for development. This presentation analyzes the necessary conditions under which rule of law initiatives may make contributions to development, with references to the law and development movements in the past. The necessity and feasibility of a new analytical framework for law and development is also examined.

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Panel Presentation: Law, Institution, and Development

“Institutional Bypasses in Brazil: Overcoming Ex-Ante Resistance to Institutional Reforms”

Prof. Mariana Prado, University of Toronto

After decades of heated debate and much controversy, recently development scholars have been converging towards a possible consensual explanation to the question of poverty: institutions. While there are many obstacles to reforming dysfunctional institutions, one of the central challenges is resistance to reforms. In a previous paper, I have explored whether one particular type of institutional reform may help policymakers deal with resistance. I call this type of reform an “institutional bypass”. Instead of trying to fix dysfunctional institutions, an institutional bypass simply creates a parallel institution that performs exactly the same function of the original institution and competes with it. The purpose of this presentation is to investigate the conditions under which an institutional bypass is likely to help reformers overcome initial resistance to reforms. It will be focused on ex-ante resistance, i.e. resistance that may block a reform from being adopted. The analysis of ex-ante resistance is based on three case studies from Brazil: a bureaucratic reform in the state of Sao Paulo in the 1990s (Poupatempo); a police reform in Rio de Janeiro in the 2000s (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, UPPs); and the ongoing use of private security forces by citizens in general.

“Entrepreneurship, Law and Development: Lessons from Weber and Bendix”

Prof. Soo Hee Lee, University of Kent, School of Business Administration

Law and development literature portrays the impact of legal institutions on economic growth, tackling at the same time social issues, such as economic inequality. The works of Max Weber on Protestant Ethic and Sociology of Law imply that norms and legal authority shape an idiosyncratic economic context in each country. Reinhard Bendix, by comparing US and Russia, develops an argument that different socio-political trajectories influence the legal environment which determines the direction of entrepreneurial and business endeavours. During the second half of the previous century, the progressive reduction or elimination of trade tariffs paved the way to neoliberalism which opened new opportunities for firms to operate abroad in an interconnected and interdependent way. While the sovereign state or religion were the sources of authority which dominated legal rationality in the past, the decline of neoliberalism today urges us to revisit the ideas of Weber and Bendix in order to understand how legal rationality emerges in the context of developing countries. As law and development movement triggers legal reforms from developed to developing countries, institutional void in developing countries often balks developmental efforts. We will examine the case of China briefly in order to scrutinize how the legal environment influences the direction of entrepreneurship.

“Law and Finance in Emerging Market”

Dr. Helen Chen, Newcastle University

The presentation is based on the ESRC project by Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge. Using data of 25 countries on SPI (shareholder protection index) from 1995-2005, the presentation introduces time-series element into the analysis of law and financial development. The finding shows that there is formal but not functional convergence of company law systems and that transplanted laws do not always bed down well but there is a legal origin effect. That is, transplants work better within legal families and shareholder protection can be ‘too much of a good thing’ in the developed common law world. However, legally-driven shareholder protection may well have positive effects on financial development in the developing world, and empirical evidence supports the ‘sequencing’ hypothesis.

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Panel Discussion, Q&A

3:30 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. Intersession Break

3:50 p.m. – 4:50 p.m. Panel Presentation: Rising Issues in Law and Development

“Piecemeal Legal Origin”

Mr. Alessandro Romano, Erasmus University

The legal origin movement is implicitly functionalist, while it explicitly prioritizes economic dimensions of development. From this perspective, the empirical findings seem to uncover the existence of a paradox. On the one hand, common law countries are apparently characterized by countless advantages, yet they do not grow faster than civil law countries. On the other hand, common law countries present a more unequal distribution of income, thus suggesting that also from a static perspective there is no a priori reason to prefer a common law system. To further investigate this paradox, we analyze if common law countries are at least characterized by a better kind (earned) of inequalities. However, as the economic distinction between inequalities of opportunities and inequalities of effort is too fragile, this proves to be an impossible task. By exploring the centuries old debate between holists and reductionists, we suggest that paradoxes of this kind are bound to emerge until the dichotomy between micro comparative law (typical of legal scholars) and macro comparative law (favored by champions of legal origins theory) is abandoned. In this vein, we develop a specific framework to bridge the two levels of enquiry and to offer a new perspective on the legal origin theory.

“Infusing Development into International Fiscal Law: SAARC a Test Case”

Mr. Ajay Kumar, University of Manchester

Development is presently not an objective of International Fiscal Law; yet, most of the other arms of International Economic Law are informed and do promote development. This presentation explores the issues that have to be considered and the obstacles that have to be overcome to make this a reality. The most critical aspect here is to create practice, and this to be generated by inverting the top-down approach. Hence, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is chosen to see whether a dominant regional economic power like India would be in a position to accede to the developmental needs of its regional treaty partners. These conclusions would add to the understanding for a normative acceptance of development globally.

“The Law and the Profits: Maintaining Civil Stability in the Era of Corporate Privilege”

Ms. Lucy Johnson, Public Interest Advocate

There is a strong correlation between unstable economies and unstable civil society. The global financial and sovereign debt crises and their aftermath is redefining relationship between the Citizen and the State. In both the developed and developing world, citizens are demanding greater accountability from their leaders and those who finance them, on one hand, and on the other, we see a greater rise of subtle forms of State Authoritarianism as civil instability and community tensions increase. This presentation explores how the international and internal legal frameworks for business and welfare provision act as triggers for civil instability, and how these legal frameworks could be adjusted to reduce the likelihood of civil unrest.

4:50 p.m. – 5:20 p.m. Panel Discussion, Q&A

5:20 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Closing Remark