Abstract
The World Development Report 2017 enthusiastically endorses law as means of governance and as a mediating force to power. Focusing on the role law plays in societies, it emphasizes its potential of enabling contestation. By contrasting this vision of law with the engagement of populist economic nationalists with domestic legal institutions, this chapter shows that the vision that underlies the WDR17 is, at best, an idealized vision of an internationalized rule of law. Economic populism, as is argued here, has a much more ambivalent relationship with law, which, due to the claim of representing the demos, leads to a stronger sense of entitlement in shaping, breaking and undermining legal institutions in the domestic sphere. Since international law is less susceptible to populist appropriation than domestic law, populists are more likely to reject it completely rather than bending it to their will.
Lys Kulamadayil is Research Fellow, Global Governance Centre, Graduate Institute, Geneva.
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Notes
- 1.
Articles of Agreement of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1944) UNTS 2 (at 134) (Articles of Agreement of the IBRD), Sec. 10.
- 2.
- 3.
Steffek and Holthaus 2018, at 108. To them, it has four ideational ingredients, namely: (1) a transfer of notions of professional colonial administration to the international sphere; (2) a cosmopolitan interpretation of 19th century public unions as caretakers of global public interests; (3) European reform-oriented socialist traditions; and (4) imperial humanitarianism—the belief that Western societies ought to limit the suffering of distant strangers.
- 4.
- 5.
Ikenberry et al. 2018.
- 6.
RM Gisselquist, WDR 2017 does not disappoint: Four implications for work in development, World Bank Blogs, 8 March 2017, http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/wdr2017-does-not-disappoint-four-implications-work-development, accessed 24 May 2019.
- 7.
- 8.
World Bank, World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, 2017, at 4.
- 9.
J Stiglitz, The Insider, New Republic, 17 April 2000, https://newrepublic.com/article/61082/the-insider, accessed 3 July 2018.
- 10.
S Metcalf, Neoliberalism: the Idea that Swallowed the World, The Guardian, 18 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world, accessed 3 July 2018.
- 11.
SA Holmes, India Cancels Dam Loan From World Bank, New York Times, 31 March 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/31/world/india-cancels-dam-loan-from-world-bank.html, accessed 3 July 2018.
- 12.
Rajagopal 2000, at 566–557.
- 13.
Ibid., at 566–567.
- 14.
World Bank, Development and Human Rights: The Role of the World Bank, 1998.
- 15.
Santos 2006.
- 16.
World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, 2000, at 102–03.
- 17.
World Bank, World Development Report 2002: Building Institutions for Markets, 2002, at 98–149.
- 18.
World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development, 2011, at 55–58.
- 19.
World Bank, World Development Report 2013: Jobs, 2012, at 21–34.
- 20.
World Bank, World Development Report 2014: Risk and Opportunity, 2013, at 23–27.
- 21.
Humphreys 2010, at 7.
- 22.
Neocleous 2012, at 950–57.
- 23.
World Bank, World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, 2017, at 14.
- 24.
World Bank, World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, 2017, at 4.
- 25.
World Bank, World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, 2017, at 84.
- 26.
World Bank, World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, 2017, at 93.
- 27.
Jahn 2018, at 47–48.
- 28.
Polakow-Suransky 2017.
- 29.
N Roubini, Economic insecurity and the rise of nationalism, The Guardian, 2 June 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/jun/02/economic-insecurity-nationalism-on-the-rise-globalisation-nouriel-roubini, accessed 3 July 2018.
- 30.
Johnson and Barnes 2015.
- 31.
D Rodrik, In Defense of Economic Populism, Social Europe, 18 January 2018, https://www.socialeurope.eu/defense-economic-populism, accessed 21 May 2019.
- 32.
Kennedy 1982, at 32.
- 33.
Pauwelyn et al. 2014.
- 34.
Ibid., at 18–21, 31; also argued by Barnett and Duvall 2005, at 54.
- 35.
Orford 2016, at 708–709.
- 36.
‘The choices between import substitution and export-led growth, or between neoliberal market-based development and strategies of either import or export promotion, offer the opportunity for sharp debate about economic theory and political preferences. Even during periods of broad consensus—on import substitution or neoliberalism—there are numerous implementation decisions to be made, which require both economic theory and political commitment. The choices within and between regimes are made and implemented in legal terms.’ See Kennedy 2004, at 156.
- 37.
Scott 1994, at 317–19.
- 38.
Bedau made this point specifically with regard to the promotion of the rule of law concept, which is vague and indeterminate. See Bedau 2005.
- 39.
Tourme-Jouannet 2007, at 816–821.
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Kulamadayil, L. (2019). Addressing Economic Populism Through Law – A Case Study of the World Development Report 2017. In: Nijman, J., Werner, W. (eds) Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2018. Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, vol 49. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-331-3_9
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