Asian Discourses of Rule of Law: Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France and the U.S.

• Author: Arumugam, Rajenthran
• Position: Book Review

Asian Discourses of Rule of Law: Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France and the U.S. Edited by Randall Peerenboom. London & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Softcover: 479pp.

The rule of law rhetoric has spread to many parts of the world and more importantly is used vigorously in social, economic and particularly, political theories more than ever before. The conventional belief is that the rule of law engenders political austerity, economic development and social cohesion in a given community. Max Weber attributed the success of capitalism in Europe to the practice of liberal democracy characterized by state accountability and the existence of rational law that induces "calculability" and "predictability". However, his theory has never been systematically tested.

The United States and most Western developed countries embrace the liberal democratic orientation of the rule of law, and in the past decades, particularly in the post-World War II era, there have been serious attempts by these countries to instil this political ideology in the developing world. The reason: there is a preconceived notion that the polities of developing countries are dictatorial and therefore individual civil and political rights are stifled. Many critics argue that cognizance of differences in culture, tradition and legal history is rarely taken into consideration, or is simply ignored by the developed countries. Consequently, the behaviour of Western advocates of the rule of law has been labelled as "ethnocentric" and "imperialistic". International economic organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have also been named as guilty parties. This situation has caused friction and continues to strain international relations between the developed and developing countries.

In Asia, arguably politics tends to make law subservient. This was witnessed during the eras of Sukarno and Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines and the coup d'etats in Thailand. The paternalistic bent of Asian governments has been well documented. To this end, political elites in several ASEAN countries believe that to augment economic development and social cohesion, civil and political rights should reflect more the interests of the collective than the individual. Hence, individual civil and political rights have been seemingly restricted, if not withheld. This has been frequently subsumed as "Asian values embedded in the rule...