Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Law and Development: Explaining Legal Change in Emerging Economies

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This study seeks to establish and test a theoretical framework for understanding legal change and the relationship between law and development in the emerging economies of Africa. This study asks the following question: Under what conditions will entrepreneurs in developing countries actually avail themselves of the legal framework supplied by the state? Synthesizing theoretical insights from socio-legal studies and the new institutional economics, the study argues that entrepreneurial demand for law is a function of both the level of social distance within business communities and the credibility and capacity of the state-provided legal system. The effectiveness of law in promoting economic development in emerging economies thus depends upon the interaction of informal social institutions and formal state-supplied political institutions.This theory will be tested by analyzing data collected over the course of nine months of field research on commercial law reform initiatives in Tanzania. Data includes a combination of close-ended surveys and open-ended ethnographic interviews of the owners/managers of Tanzanian firms in three cities (Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Mbeya) and independent data on legal institutions, law reform initiatives and institutional capacity in Tansania. The study seeks to make important contributions to three distinct social science disciplines: comparative politics (particularly the comparative study of political institutions in the developing world), law and development (by identifying the conditions under which law reform may contribute to the creation and development of market economies), and comparative law (by analyzing the operation of commercial law and legal systems in developing countries).