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2. Legalism Sans Frontières?: U.S. Rule-of-Law Aid in the Arab World
- Author:
- David M. Mednicoff
- Publication Date:
- 09-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE IN RULE-OF-LAW PROMOTION, above all the basic question of whether Western rule-of-law aid programs are on the right track to help build the rule of law in recipient countries, is especially acute in the Arab world. Arab states generally share two features that render external rule-of-law aid particularly difficult—long-standing nondemocratic governments, and legal systems that graft Ottoman, European, and contemporary sources onto Islamic norms. We cannot presume that U.S. common-law practitioners can build the rule of law by transporting or transplanting their technocratic techniques into such different legal soil. Indeed, the very idea that people in Arab societies would be receptive to American guidance in legal reform is dubious in the current climate of broad, popular mistrust of the United States.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Arabia, and Arab Countries
3. The Complexity of Success: The U.S. Role in Russian Rule of Law Reform
- Author:
- Matthew J. Spence
- Publication Date:
- 07-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- MIXED RESULTS FROM THE PROLIFERATION OF WESTERN RULE OF LAW assistance over the past twenty years has taught us much about what efforts do not work. Criminal justice reform in Russia offers a different type of lesson; it is a rare success story of rule of law promotion. In the 1990s, the U.S. government sought to promote the rule of law in many parts of the former Soviet Union and beyond, but few of these efforts outside Russia produced concrete results. Instead, lawlessness became a primary symptom of the apparent failure of many attempted rule of law reforms in the former Soviet Union.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Government
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, and Europe
4. Do Judicial Councils Further Judicial Reform? Lessons from Latin America
- Author:
- Linn Hammergren
- Publication Date:
- 06-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- JUDICIAL REFORM EFFORTS IN LATIN AMERICA, and by extension worldwide, seem to fall easily prey to magic bullets. In the past two decades, reformers in the region and aid providers from North America and Western Europe have seized upon a whole series of entry points for judicial reform—including model codes, accusatory criminal justice systems, court administration reforms, information technology, alternative dispute resolution, legal services, and constitutional courts. Sometime during the late 1980s, as the issue of judicial independence came to receive more serious attention, judicial councils joined the list, and nearly a dozen countries adopted them. It was not until the late 1990s that questions about their utility began to emerge. Although Latin America is beginning to reexamine its love affair with the councils, the model has been gaining ground in other regions. Western Europeans, who invented the mechanism, have been suffering their own doubts. This has not prevented their joining with U.S. reformers in recommending it to postcommunist nations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The cautionary lessons from Latin America's several-decade experiment with judicial councils have not yet been analyzed and disseminated. This essay is a start in that direction.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Government
- Political Geography:
- America, Europe, France, South America, Latin America, and Central America
5. Russia's Decline and Uncertain Recovery
- Author:
- Thomas E. Jr. Graham
- Publication Date:
- 05-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- For much of the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the issue of reform—of transition to free-market democracy—dominated discussions of Russia in Russia itself and in the West. Russian president Boris Yeltsin advocated reform; Western governments declared their support and offered their assistance. This was particularly true of the U.S. government. President Clinton's administration came into office in 1993 determined to assist Russia in its transformation into “a normal, modern state—democratic in its governance, abiding by its own constitution and by its own laws, market-oriented and prosperous in its economic development, at peace with itself and the rest of the world,” as deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, the chief architect of the U.S. administration's Russia policy, was wont to put it.
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union
6. Are Russians Undemocratic?
- Author:
- Michael McFaul and Timothy J. Colton
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- A NEW NARRATIVE ABOUT POST -S OVIET R USSIA is taking hold in policy, media, and academic circles and shows signs of entrenching as a new conventional wisdom. By this reading, Russia's experiment with democracy has flat-out failed. So misconceived and mismanaged were the political and economic reforms of the 1990s that they have fueled mass disenchantment with democratic norms and brought authoritarianism back into repute. Russians, in short, are said to be giving up on democracy.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Government
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
7. Democracy Assistance and NGO Strategies in Post-Communist Societies
- Author:
- Sarah E. Mendelson and John K. Glenn
- Publication Date:
- 02-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Since the end of the Cold War, Eastern Europe and Eurasia have been host to a virtual army of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs)-from the United States, Britain, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe-all working on various aspects of institutional development, such as helping to establish competitive political parties and elections, independent media, and civic advocacy groups, as well as trying to reduce ethnic conflict. Little is known-although much good and bad is believed-about the impact of this assistance, carried out on a transnational level in cooperation with local political and social activists. This study, based at Columbia University, was designed to address this gap.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, International Organization, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia