Paper short abstract:

International aid providers have long supported legislative drafting and reform in the Global South that seek to transform non-state justice forums into modern justice systems. This paper explores the underlying logic of these initiatives before examining their empirical consequences.

Paper long abstract:

International aid providers have long supported legislative drafting and reform in the Global South to advance the rule of law, promote human rights, reduce conflict, and increase security. By partnering with host states, they seek to pass regulations that transform non-state justice forums into something akin to the modern justice systems in the Global North (or rather an idealized version thereof). This paper explores the underlying logic of these initiatives before examining their empirical consequences. Ultimately, a review of internationally backed legal reform efforts finds that their impact is decidedly limited. International efforts to impose change almost never work. Worse they can provoke a backlash or disrupt existing, effective justice forums. When advances occur, they are generally modest and tend to hinge on whether the state supports those efforts and whether state and international activities are deemed legitimate by those legal authorities and their communities more broadly. While highlighting a wide range of examples, the research will focus on two case studies of places with robust legal pluralism that have received extensive foreign assistance, namely Afghanistan (2002-2021) and Timor-Leste (2002-2022). The paper will draw on extensive in-country interviews, contemporary documentation, and relevant secondary literature.