PLUNDER: WHEN THE RULE OF LAW IS ILLEGAL by UGO MATTEI and LAURA NADER
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | NIMER SULTANY |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00488.x |
PLUNDER: WHEN THE RULE OF LAW IS ILLEGAL by UGO MATTEI
and LAURA NADER
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, 283 pp., £50.00 (hbk), £19.99 (pbk))
How should one see the development of the international order and the
global economy? Should we call contemporary developments `progress' or
`regress'? Attempting to answer such questions, a legal scholar and a legal
anthropologist have written a book on the current state of world order. Along
the lines of critical scholarship, the authors urge us to shift our paradigms,
re-orient our gaze, and invert our perspectives: what we see on the surface is
neither the full story nor the true story.
Their mission is to challenge mainstream stories concerning law and
development. Mainstream legal stories exalt the concept of `rule of law'
while ignoring its dark side. Order is supposedly inextricably linked to the
law, whereas disorder is perceived as the antithesis of the `rule of law'.
Similarly, `development' stories present the neo-liberal economic policies
pursued by the main international bodies and treaties as the best way of
resolving the predicaments of local as well as global economies. Local
economies should be open to competition and to the global flow of capital,
free trade should govern, privatization should be pursued, and `structural
adjustments' or `comprehensive development', whenever needed, should be
undertaken by `Third World' countries. Indeed, the `rule of law' and the
`free market' have become the main conditions for joining the `civilized
nations'.
As a counter-narrative to the dominant fairy tale (law and prosperity), this
book constructs a story of lawlessness and plunder. The argument is not
merely that the `rule of law' at times creates disorder and that notions of
`market efficiency' occasionally conceal plunder. Quite the contrary: rather
than plunder being the exception, it is the rule:
Plunder . . . is an important concept to unify and portray, as the rule, distortions
in the model of capitalist expansion that are at most acknowledged as
exceptions. Perhaps plunder as the rule rather than the exception allows the
reader to get outraged. (p. 7, emphasis in original)
The book is an enjoyable, easy read. It does an excellent job in sketching
an alternative understanding of the current world order. It is an ambitious
book and it is admirable that the authors, in spite of their denial (p. 6),
attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of the connecting lines between
different developments. Thus, the book lends itself to the critique that it is
too short to be able to discuss compellingly the different subject-matters.
Yet, it is rich in detail and examples. This richness is significant since it is
occasionally the case in left-wing scholarly discussion of the ideology of law
that it overlooks the materiality of law: that is, its effect on real people and
real situations. The book is passionately argued, and rightly so. And it is in
the nature of this kind of project that it provokes a wide range of questions.
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ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School
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