The Dynamics Of Power And The Rule Of Law

This volume explores the various strategies, mechanisms, and processes that influence rule of law dynamics across borders and the national/international divide, illuminating the diverse paths of influence. It shows to what extent, and how, rule of law dynamics have changed in recent years, especially at the transnational and international levels of government. To explore these interactive dynamics, the volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the normative perspective of law with the analytical perspective of social sciences. The volume contributes to several fields, including studies of rule of law, law and development, and good governance; democratization; globalization studies; neo-institutionalism and judicial studies; international law, transnational governance, and the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes; and comparative law (Islamic, African, Asian, Latin American legal systems).

This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Recent scholarship has increasingly shown that traditional rulers occupy a pivotal place in the dynamics of power in Africa. Drawing upon the work of Van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, former professor of African Studies at Leiden University, this collection presents nine case studies of the dynamics of traditional leadership in modern Africa. African and European specialists deal with local situations in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Togo, Cameroon, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, and South Africa. The debate on the resilience of African chieftainship adds to the significance of this volume. Wim van Binsbergen is professor of foundations of intercultural philosophy, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and chair of the theme group on globalization, African Studies Centre, Leiden.

This collection of eighteen key essays from jurists, political theorists and public law political scientists, explores the role law plays in the political system. The first eleven essays identify the standard features associated with the rule of law. The next seven essays then explore how different ways of separating and dispersing power contribute to this democratic style of rule by forcing politicians and judges alike to treat people as equals and regard none as above the law.

Offering an anthropological perspective, this volume explores the changing relations between law and governance, examining how changes in the structure of governance affect the relative social significance of law within situations of legal pluralism. The authors argue that there has been a re-regulation rather than a de-regulation, propagated by a plurality of regulative authorities and this re-regulation is accompanied by an increasing ideological dominance of rights talk and juridification of conflict. Drawing on insights into such processes, this volume explores the extent to which law is used both as a constitutive legitimation of governance and as the medium through which governance processes take place. Highlighting some of the paradoxes and the unintended consequences of these regulating processes and the ensuing dynamics, Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling will be a valuable resource for researchers and students working in the areas of legal anthropology and governance.

Building the Rule of Law in China explores the idea that China needs a more globalized and diversified vision for the science of law, presenting the need to think differently from the two major western mainstream legal cultures, the Anglo-American and the continental systems. Other globalized, universalized, and diversified models and experiences in the rule of law from diverse civilizations have much to offer China. Through learning from the strengths exhibited by systems in countries with a very developed and well-organized rule of law, and absorbing essential aspects from different countries, China might be well positioned to promote the development of the rule of law in a robust and comprehensive manner. This book explores the topic from several perspectives, giving the reader an up-to-date resource on the ever-evolving vision for the science of law in China. Explores the situation of rule of law in China as it currently stands Presents a case that China must look beyond the two western systems of law for a more globalized vision Gives analysis on the contemporary situation, and insight into the near future Presents a particular perspective on the rule of law in China by a scholar closely involved with its actual development Translates into English, providing a new and valuable perspective to an English speaking readership

A striking new analysis of Myanmar's court system, revealing how the rule of law is 'lexically present but semantically absent'.

There is a great confusion in the world and even more in that part of the world that considers itself as representing the Western civilization. This confusion arises in two realms: the semantics and the conceptual. The first of these confusions is the result of ignoring the ethical and the political philosophy antithesis between the Anglo-American philosophy and the Franco-German one. As Balint Vazsonyi once wrote, they are as different as day and night. At the same time, that philosophical confusion to which Dr Ribas refers as the syncretism of Western philosophy, is the pretentious nirvana of democracy in the West. Conceptually, democracy may be divided in two antithetical systems: the rule of law and the majority rule. Majority rule is the opposite of the protection of individual rights: to life, liberty, property and the pursuance of happiness. In this book Dr Armando P. Ribas exposes the fact that the apparent rights of the majorities are no more than the absolute power of governments in the name of the people, that constitutes the new deity. This is in Aristotelian terms demagoguery, and the reason why democracy fails in Latin America, as it happened in Europe where Hitler and Mussolini represented majority rule as the most common excuse: reason of the state.

The rule of law has been celebrated as “an unqualified human good," yet there is considerable disagreement about what the ideal of the rule of law requires. When people clamor for the preservation or extension of the rule of law, are they advocating a substantive conception of the rule of law respecting private property and promoting liberty, a formal conception emphasizing an “inner morality of law,” or a procedural conception stressing the right to be heard by an impartial tribunal and to make arguments about what the law is? When are exertions of executive power “outside the law” justified on the ground that they may be necessary to maintain or restore the conditions for the rule of law in emergency circumstances, such as defending against terrorist attacks? In Getting to the Rule of Law a group of contributors from a variety of disciplines address many of the theoretical legal, political, and moral issues raised by such questions and examine practical applications “on the ground” in the United States and around the world. This timely, interdisciplinary volume examines the ideal of the rule of law, questions when, if ever, executive power “outside the law” is justified to maintain or restore the rule of law, and explores the prospects for and perils of building the rule of law after military interventions.