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- Convenor:
-
Deval Desai
(University of Edinburgh)
- Stream:
- F: Governance, politics and social protection
- Location:
- E1
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Legal theory has a long and celebrated tradition of exploring law's relationship to inequality. Development theory, less so. This panel fosters an initial conversation between studies of law and development, and law and inequality, that emerge from various critical legal and realist traditions.
Long Abstract:
From Marxists to legal realists, and legal liberals to legal institutionalists, lawyers have developed nuanced accounts of the relationship between law and inequality. They have debated whether, how and why law and inequality co-produce, mutually disrupt, or do very little to each other. In doing so, they have asked what is special (or not) about law as an institution, the proper relationship between law and political economy, and the role of empirical social sciences in understanding and changing law.
In the development literature, by contrast, the relationship between law and inequality is not so well understood. Rather, law is generally articulated either as a specific set of institutional forms to be assessed by lawyers (like courts or constitutions), or as an instrument to be analyzed by social scientists (like any other motor of political, economic, or social change). In other words, law is either thin and autonomous from drivers of inequality, or thick and subordinate to them.
Yet as legal scholars have shown, it is important to uncover the complex relationships between legal form and legal instrumentality to interrogate the politics of law and inequality. This panel aims to do so, exploring the links between law, development, and inequality. It seeks theoretical and empirical papers that bring legal insights to bear on debates around development and inequality; that introduce development issues to existing legal approaches to law and inequality; and that provide methodological insights into the role of the social sciences in thinking about law, development, and inequality.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Morten Koch Andersen (university of copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores relationships between human rights, corruption and development. I address human rights and corruption, and the practices they describe through human rights cases and human rights work, on the encounter between policing authorities and the policed that links violence and capital.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the relationships between human rights, corruption and development. I address human rights and corruption, and the practices they describe through human rights cases and human rights work, on the encounter between policing authorities (state or non-state) and the policed that links forms of violence and capital e.g. bribing police for not violating someone.
Two challenges are presented. First, they are inherently difficult to study empirically. They exist in a shadow-land where they incarnate abstract forms of the horrible and the bad. Secondly, corruption and human rights are legal categories grounded in United Nations Conventions. Although, factual legal categories, their abstract and illusory nature render them less effective as analytical categories. They are as much what needs to be studied as they are concepts that help us to understand the social reality they were designed to shape. I suggest a complementary analysis of how practices associated to human rights and corruption are linked empirically, and how they effects issues of social and political development. This involves a move from legal notions to social practices and a focus on the situated contestation of authority in the administration of law and conflict mediation. I propose human rights cases and legal work in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as a productive methodological empirical lens to understand, address and inhibit practices that supports and sustains corruption, and vice versa, and how it impact development and forms of citizenship and state formation, and equal social orders.
Aneta Tyc (University of Lodz)
Paper short abstract:
The paper is built on the assumption that social standards should improve parallel to the economic development of countries. The author makes remarks concerning the need for reforms of the WTO and the ILO, and comments on possibilities connected with combining both forces.
Paper long abstract:
According to a traditional view, development pertains to economic development, which has frequently been opposed to law, especially labour law, which is perceived as hindering growth. The aim of the paper is to identify opportunities to improve the regulation of global processes towards providing not only economic growth, but also social justice and the effectiveness of fundamental labour rights. Nowadays in many countries (regions) fundamental labour rights are not sufficiently respected and efforts should be made to create effective mechanisms in this regard. We still have to deal with so-called race to the bottom. Low labour costs, the possibility of flexible employment reduction, lowering wages and reduction of duties related to social security are factors that often determine the transfer of business to countries offering the most favorable conditions of its operating. However, social standards should improve parallel to the economic development of countries. The author makes and develops some assumptions, e.g. that WTO law should be reformed and that the ILO and its supervisory mechanisms should be amended due to the fact that procedural compliance (concerned with formal obligations such as reporting) seems to be on the decline, and substantive compliance (i.e. whether states have fulfilled obligations set out in an international instrument) is also unsatisfactory, especially in terms that the ILO appears to be unable to respond to cases of non-compliance. The author also comments on possibilities connected with combining forces of the WTO and the ILO.
Karolina Mendecka (University of Lodz)
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to evaluate on the importance of the intersectional approach to children's rights, in addition to the right to substantive equality, in order to improve their living conditions, prospects for the future and to enrich academic and political discourse on development issues.
Paper long abstract:
Children are the greatest victims of discriminatory politics and imperfect law of our times. This paper aims to evaluate on the available theoretical and legal tools that can significantly improve their plight and support overcoming the inequality, as well as enhance factors that increase the process of development. Notably, the formal understanding of equality (which purports that likes should be treated alike) is outdated - the recent scholarship promotes the substantive equality, which focuses on the group that has experienced disadvantage the most. However, as S. Fredman proposes, the right to substantive equality "should not be collapsed into a single formula", such as equality of results, opportunity or dignity. Instead, she proposes new analytical framework that takes into account affirmative actions, surmounting prejudice, enforcing equal participation and accommodation of diversity. This paper will develop on that theoretical scheme in reference to children, and broaden it by adding the intersectional dimension, which has become an essential concept in the human rights discourse. The term "intersectionality" is used to describe the situation where multiple grounds of discrimination (gender, disability, economic status etc.) operate at the same time. It will be argued that there is a pressing need to acknowledge the intersectional approach in law in addition to the multidimensional substantive equality measures, as it can further political discourse on development issues and improve children's protection all over the globe.