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Bogdan, Michael --- "Development Assistance in the Legal Field: Promotion of Market Economy v Human Rights" [2010] ELECD 114; in Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Antonina; Nergelius, Joakim (eds), "New Directions in Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: New Directions in Comparative Law

Editor(s): Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Antonina; Nergelius, Joakim

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443181

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Development Assistance in the Legal Field: Promotion of Market Economy v Human Rights

Author(s): Bogdan, Michael

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

3. Development assistance in the legal
field: promotion of market economy v
human rights
Michael Bogdan
From a lawyer's viewpoint, it is extremely satisfying that the importance of
law as a pre-condition of desirable economic and social development is now
generally recognised. The same developing countries, that used to ask Sweden
for food, machines or medicines, ask now for assistance in producing a bank-
ruptcy law, educating judges or publishing an official gazette. Development
assistance in the field of law has become a large-scale industry, connected to
the transition of many Third World countries and former communist states
towards some kind of market economy and political democracy. This assis-
tance creates, at the same time, a number of novel problems.1
Sweden is a relatively small donor in this context in comparison with some
other countries and international organisations such as UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme). Only about one percent of direct Swedish develop-
ment aid, administered by the Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency (SIDA), relates to law and legal matters.2 Sweden used to differ from
most Western countries by providing generous assistance to various `progressive'
regimes of preponderantly Marxist orientation, which makes Sweden a well-
established donor in the same countries even now, after they have abandoned the
Marxist economic and legal model. This does not mean, however, that the assis-
tance to these countries' legal development is uncontroversial. While aid in the
field of promotion of human rights seems to be generally accepted, helping ...