A Changing of the Guard:
The Future of International Law and Development under Obama
January 29, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
UNC School of Law - Chapel Hill, NC
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the international aid and
development policies of the United States and other Western powers were
dominated by the Washington Consensus, a standard package of legal and economic
reforms designed to allow the free hand of competitive markets to bring
economic prosperity and political stability to the developing world. The
Consensus stressed the shrinking of states and their regulatory structures,
privatization, trade liberalization, the protection of individual rights, and
the general Westernization of poor countries' legal systems. In the view of
most commentators, these Consensus reforms failed to achieve their intended
results. Poor countries who adopted them
became poorer and less politically stable.
In recent years, United States development policy has
focused on the importance of healthy institutions. While the Consensus aimed to drastically pare
governmental institutions, the new institutional approach acknowledges the
vital role of institutions - particularly laws and legal enforcement mechanisms
- and focuses on ensuring that those institutions are healthy,
high-functioning, and conducive to economic growth and political stability.
This Symposium will explore whether the new institutional
approach will - and should - remain at the center of future law and development
policy. It will ask whether other voices
may prevail, including a growing call for the United States to stop meddling in
the developing world and withdraw entirely from the international development
business. It will raise the question of whether the emergence of China and
India as powerful economic and political actors will alter the rules of the law
and development game. Finally, the
Symposium will question whether a bold new vision for international law and
development will take shape under the Obama administration.