Implementing Institutions: From Courts to Bureaucracy

Abstract

Without adequate implementation, the law-in-action will only accidentally conform to the law-in-the-books. That puts at risk, not only the whole development project, but also the Rule of Law (Seidman, R.B., 1987b:84, 85–6). Governments establish a variety of institutions to implement law: courts and other dispute-settlement institutions, public corporations, bureaucratic agencies.¹ This chapter considers: (1) The general relationship between law-making and law-implementing; (2) a theory to guide investigations of implementing institutions; (3) the reasons for the abandonment of the myth of courts as the predominant implementing agency; and (4) the paradox of bureaucracy in the third world.