The prevailing faith in law and development orthodoxy holds that Western legal expertise is the only way to get developing countries to adopt laws, rules, and procedures that will promote growth and democracy. International and bilateral development agencies are eager to support legal reform in the many countries in which they operate. These agencies need relatively simple models that can be easily supported through traditional tools of foreign assistance. They are not interested in hearing that the rule of law is a culturally sensitive matter and that every country is different and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to legal reform.
In the long run, most societies will adjust their law to the structures and culture that they are based upon. But in the short run, a new event or situation will have its impact on law in ways that are not completely predictable. Some of these influences are simply technical and have little or no effect on the way that society functions – codification, for instance. Others, however, have much more serious consequences. These include changes arising from the fact that an outside force (a war, plague, or revolution) has its influence on the culture and structure of a particular legal system, or from the fact that some group within society wants to use law as a formal hook or excuse for advancing its own goals.
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