Author: jmoudud

Free Trade Free for All: Market Romanticism Versus Reality

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The drama surrounding President Trump鈥檚 decision to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum has roiled the Republican Party and wide swathes of the corporate elite. The tariff decision comes on the heels of . This accusation of 鈥渦nfairness鈥� when it comes to US trade deficits is well worn. In a previous era, Japan was the alleged culprit of 鈥渦nfair鈥� trade practices because of its persistent trade surpluses with the U.S.Read More »

Beyond the Third Moment in Law and Development: New Insights from Legal Political Economy

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This blog post provides insights from what I have come to call the legal political economy perspective to critique the World Bank and neoclassical economics more generally. At the heart of what has been called the World Bank鈥檚 Third Moment in Law and Development is the claim that government involvement is necessary to eliminate 鈥渕arket failures鈥� and promote both business development and social justice.

In contrast to the mainstream Law and Economics (L & E) approach, which informs the Third Moment, my position, derived from the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) tradition (and its historical ancestor, Legal Realism), is:

  • Property is fundamentally a bundle of rights and thus property ownership at its core entails coercive power struggles between rivals and between owners and non-owners; coercion at its core.
  • The interrelatedness of law and power relations (鈥淚f the program of Realists was to lift the veil of legal Form to reveal living essences of power and need, the program of the Critics is to lift the veil of power and need to expose the legal elements in their composition鈥� (, 109)). These power struggles over economic outcomes occur within the context of background laws that determine property, contracts, and torts.
  • The notion of an economic seesaw in with potential for instability in property and contractual relations.
  • If the goal is to understand how legal structures shape power struggles then the question becomes how are the laws themselves to be determined? Following the CLS perspective, I would emphasize the role of ideational factors determining the intellectual underpinnings of neoliberal policies鈥攆actors that have consciously been created by the financiers of the L & E tradition.

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