The Rule of Law in international development

Since the mid-1990s, the ‘Rule of Law’ as been recognized as a dominant conceptual frame for legal reform work in international development. As a concept and a norm, its meaning has long been ambiguous and ‘essentially contested’, but through its promotion in international development project work it has become even more so. The ‘work’ that the concept does to legitimate and organize legal reform work in development is variable and multi-faceted and inconsistent enough that it becomes difficult to describe and explain it in ways that link it coherently to practice. This leaves the Rule of Law as a paradoxical, strange, and frustrating concept whose reality makes little sense to those who are tasked with promoting it in international development. It is ubiquitous and important while also meaningless and empty; information about it abounds, but little is helpful for those whose job it is to actually promote it anywhere; it is a universal and transcendent value and concept, yet it is elusive and difficult to ‘apply’ anywhere in practice. This paper will provide an alternative, relational description of what the ‘Rule of Law’ is and means in international development and what work the concept does in practice. Using qualitative empirical data from 40 semi-structured interviews with Rule of Law development professionals, I explore the concept’s relational social reality in international development to demonstrate how the institutional structures and procedures of international development policymaking and project work modify and fragment its meaning and meaningfulness within and among organizations and actors at multiple levels in ways that make any comprehensive understanding of it virtually impossible for those who work with it. By establishing this fragmenting relationship between concept and practice, the paper challenges fundamental presumptions and assumptions about how concepts like the Rule of Law ‘work’ in international development generally.