Law, Institutions and International Development highlights the limitations of the traditional school of law and development that was based on a mainstream understanding of economic development, emphasising notions of rational man at the micro level and the superiority of modernity and unilinear models of economic progress at the macro level. It offers a frame for 'law and development' thinking by specifically posing the question: 'how do social sciences perceive the role of the law in international development?' Discussing a range of local, national and international institutions, the focus of the book, therefore, turns from the law-making/law-breaking paradigm to law's relation to social norms.
Shailaja Fennell is Lecturer in Development Studies and also the Director of Central Asia Research at the University of Cambridge. Her previous publications include Rules, Rubrics and Riches: The Interrelations between Legal Reform and International Development (2010) and Gender Education and Equality in a Global Context: Conceptual Frameworks and Policy Perspectives (ed. with M. Arnot, 2008).