Path dependency, law and development

Abstract

This article revisits the law and development movement. It notes that there is a renewed interest in law and development both amongst scholars and within the donor community. It seeks to examine whether there is a new law and development movement or whether the old ideas and approaches are merely being recycled. It examines recent literature on law and development and concludes that while there is a greater appreciation of the limits of law as a vehicle to bring about development, the underlying aims of both practice in and literature on law and development remains to bring about greater Westernisation of non‐Western legal systems.