And now for the hard part: measuring success in rule of law reform.

• Author: Mansfield, Anna
• Position: Book Review

Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law Edited by Erik G. Jensen and Thomas C. Heller. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003, 464 pages.

As the scope and frequency of international development activities have increased dramatically over the last few decades, so has the focus on what is fast becoming a central aspect of democratization: the promotion of the rule of law through legal and judicial reform activities. Consequent to the explosion of such programs, there has been an ever-growing literature on theories of development in relation to the rule of law. Such theories attempt to counsel drafters and implementers on program efficacy and sustainability in transitional societies. But while theories of these often elusive goals have been continually refined, measures of the programs' success in practice have been less developed. Indeed, the scarcity of such performance reviews has often been connected to the lack of "lessons learned" from the implementation of development programs in one transitional society to the next. For example, rule of law reform in East Timor or Kosovo would have benefited tremendously from a closer scrutiny of similar projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Responding to this imbalance between theory development and empirical assessment, Erik G. Jensen and Thomas C. Heller offer an impressive volume of studies by a group of prominent international empiricists. The contributors attempt to bring greater precision to measuring the performance of rule of law programs. Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law makes an important contribution to the scholarship on legal reform while addressing some of the central problems underlying many development programs, such as poor attention to the baseline levels of institutional independence, accountability and transparency. Appreciation of such baseline levels is crucial if the effects (and effectiveness) of rule of law reform programs are to be understood. As Jensen and Heller note in their introduction, "without a functional understanding of the installed base [of governance institutions], reform is likely to disturb the equilibrium--at the peril of reformers." Indicative of the variety and depth of the contributions to the volume is an essay on the Chinese judiciary by Hualing Fu, who asks, "Are Chinese judges and courts independent, competent and fair?" and "Have twenty years of law reform in China made any difference?"...