Legal Empowerment: The Vicious Cycle of Logic in Project Funding

Millions of dollars of international aid is given to developing countries each year to strengthen “rule-of-law” institutions. Led by institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the majority of international legal aid rests on the assumption that market and investment friendly legal systems – protecting foreign and domestic investment, property and contract rights – will spur economic growth that in turn, will “trickle down” to the poor in the name of poverty alleviation. However, even after over two decades of these institutional legal reforms, little evidence has emerged supporting the impact that these reforms have had on poverty alleviation.From the frustrations of international legal development practitioners who have witnessed the real gaps between this top-down institutional approach and poverty alleviation emerged the field of legal empowerment. A promising alternative, it is a bottom-up approach aiming to afford poor and disadvantaged populations legal advice and services under the belief that once knowledgeable about their legal rights, these groups may take more control of their lives and lift themselves from the strains of poverty. At the moment, a huge imbalance exists between the amount of funding given to institutional reforms and those given to legal empowerment type projects. This imbalance needs to change, but is seemingly troubled by a vicious cycle of funding logic. International aid institutions like the World Bank and the IMF hesitate to grant long-term development loans unless impact is shown or looks promising. This is usually determined by looking at the impact of short-term developmental loans, which often act as a preliminary indicator of a projects tangible impact or promise. Herein lies the fundamental tension such a short-term, impact-oriented approach has with legal empowerment, which is by nature, a long-term process. In fact, sustained funding is often a predicate to the success of a legal empowerment intervention. This is because legal empowerment targets the “users” of the law and not the institutions. Whereas institutional reform may often be perceived as a more attractive option because it can point to tangible results like how many courts have been built, how many cases have been adjudicated, and number of judicial officers trained, this is often indeterminate of who is using the judicial channels and for what purpose. It’s possible that, for example, such cases actually involved wealthy corporations or individuals that disenfranchised the poor. In such cases, one must question whether poverty alleviation is really taking place. On the other hand, legal empowerment targets the poor and disadvantaged. It’s a long-term process because it seeks to educate these groups of their rights from the ground-up and that demands patience. In addition, these groups face deeply engrained cultures and socio-economic barriers making impact that more challenging. Thus, short-term tangible impact is hard to measure, thereby leaving funding of legal empowerment projects to receive only a small portion of developmental loans given. In practice, however, it’s often more desirable because it seeks to empower the poor and engrain within them a sustainable notion of rights and justice. Without this foundation that legal empowerment initiatives attempt to give rise to, these legal institutions cannot effectively alleviate property and inevitably, “courts are just buildings, judges just public employees, and constitutions just pieces of paper.” This paper examines this vicious cycle of funding logic and proposes that international lending institutions be mindful of legal empowerment’s requirement for long-term funding even if short-term impact is unclear. This is because it may inevitably be a more viable solution to poverty alleviation than mere institutional reform. Part I of this paper begins by examining the philosophical differences between rule-of-law and legal empowerment. It continues by listing a common core of legal empowerment characteristics along with the methodology for measurement and evaluation. In Part II, this paper describes select legal empowerment studies funded by international banks and aid agencies. It attempts to illustrate how legal empowerment interventions are formulated and implemented, along with describing the impact or discoveries from those interventions along the way. Part III concludes by attempting to frame the current funding framework as applicable to legal empowerment as unrealistic and impractical. It provides some context to that position by identifying the cultural barriers to change and describes why other intangible information may be more valuable. Finally, it ends by describing the possible economic benefits of legal empowerment and how increased funding will only improve the quality of the research.