Law and Development of Middle-Income Countries: Avoiding the Middle-Income Trap

Description

In 1960, there were 101 middle-income countries. By 2008, only thirteen of these had become high-income countries. Why do so many middle-income countries fail to develop after a promising start, becoming mired in the so-called middle-income trap? This interdisciplinary volume addresses the special challenges that middle-income countries confront from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. It is the first volume that addresses law and development issues in middle-income countries from the perspective of political, administrative and legal institutions and policies. The goal is to provide international development agencies and domestic policy makers with feasible recommendations to address the wide range of technically, politically and socially complex issues that middle-income countries face.

Randall Peerenboom is a Professor of Law at La Trobe University and an Associate Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. He is a former Director of the Oxford Foundation for Law, Justice and Society Rule of Law in China Programme, and was Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Law School from 1998 to 2007. He has been a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, Ford Foundation, EU-China, UNDP, and other international organizations on legal reforms and rule of law in China and Asia, and is the Co-Editor in Chief of The Hague Journal of Rule of Law. He is also a CIETAC arbitrator and frequently serves as expert witness on PRC legal issues. Recent books include The Dynamics of Rule of Law in an Era of International and Transnational Governance (edited with Michael Zurn and Andre Noelkamper, Cambridge University Press, 2012); Judicial Independence in China (edited, Cambridge University Press, 2010); Regulation in Asia: Pushing Back on Globalization (edited with John Gillespie, 2009); and China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (2007). Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilda Wolf Research Scholar and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded data set cataloging the world's constitutions since 1789. His recent co-authored book, The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009), won the best book award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association. His other books include Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), Administrative Law and Governance in Asia (2008), Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (with Tamir Moustafa, 2008) and Comparative Constitutional Law (with Rosalind Dixon, 2011). Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.