Markets, Democracy, and Ethnicity: Toward a New Paradigm for Law and Development

It is by now a commonplace that we are living in a period of radical global transformation. Particularly in the developing world, this transformation has had two watchwords: markets and democracy. Indeed, the reascendant teleology of free-market democracy has redefined the very concept of underdevelopment-a term that has shed its exclusively Third World trappings and today joins in a single embrace countries from Algeria to Azerbaijan, from Pakistan to Poland. Marketization and democratization each have been the site of massive Western legal intervention in the developing world. Legal work on marketization ranges from structuring international project finance to drafting market-oriented laws to developing legal regimes that facilitate the transition from command to market economies. Work on democratization includes not only writing constitutions but also grappling with formidable issues such as the transplantability of Western social and political institutions and postcommunist state building

Sixth Annual Grotius Lecture: World on Fire

Many thanks to all of you for coming this evening. It\u27s a great pleasure and honor for me to be giving the Grotius Lecture this year. I\u27m very grateful to Hannah Buxbaum, Charlotte Ku, and Anne- Marie Slaughter for inviting me. Many thanks also to Danny Bradlow and to the American University, Washington College of Law for co-sponsoring this event and to Upendra Baxi for commenting. My plan is to speak for about thirty minutes. I\u27ll start by presenting the main thesis of my book, World on Fire, and I\u27ll try to illustrate that thesis with examples from specific countries, from Indonesia to Bolivia to Russia to Sierra Leone. I\u27ll then shift my focus to the United States and how it fits into the picture. I\u27ll conclude with some thoughts about policy implications for international institutions and international lawyers

The Privatization-Nationalization Cycle: The Link Between Markets and Ethnicity in Developing Countries

Privatization has been the source of growing global exhilaration. By the early 1990s, at least eighty-three countries were conducting some sig- nificant form of privatization, prompting commentators to describe the world-wide movement as profound and unprecedented -an economic revolution. Policymakers throughout the developing world have embraced privatization as the means to efficiency and productivity, lower prices, economic development and modernization, democracy, equality, justice, maximization of social welfare, and the elimination of social evils. According to former Argentine economics minister, Rogelio Frigerio, the influx of private capital, particularly foreign capital, will allow us to increase production, the sole goal of any economic system. Greater production means more work and better salaries, full employment, an improved standard of living, that is to say, a solution to the social problem, both for the urban population and for the rural population. Minister Frigerio\u27s claims are notable because they describe not the privatization initiatives of the 1990s but rather those of the 1950s. This earlier solution to the social problem was followed by a return to statist economic policies in the 1960s, a renewed commitment to free en- terprise, a swing back to nationalization in the 1970s, and only then by the latest round of Argentinian privatizations

The Paradox of Free Market Democracy in the Developing World

Amy L. Chua is Professor of Law at Duke University, and currently a visiting professor at Stanford University. She received her J.D. from Harvard in 1987 where she was the Executive editor of the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for Chief Judge Patricia Wald ofthe U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit, 1987-1988), and was an Associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton from 1988-94, where she worked on numerous international transactions in Asia and Latin America, including privatization ofTelefonos de Mexico. She joined the Duke faculty in 1994. Professor Chua is currently a member of the Executive Committee and Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, and her publications include Markets, Democracy, and Ethnicity: Toward a New Paradigm for Law and Development (Yale Law Journal) and The Privatization-Nationalization Cycle: The Link Between Markets and Ethnicity in Developing Countries (Columbia Law Review). Her principal areas of interest are law and development, comparative law, international business transactions, and contracts

HIGH VOLTAGE SWITCHING SYSTEM FOR ELECTROWETTING ON-DIELECTRIC (EWOD)

Electrowetting-On-Dielectric (EWOD) is becoming a standout amongst all the broadly used method for controlling small amount of liquid on a flat electrode surface. Scaling down the EWOD process has been a technological development recently as it appeared to have better integration and automation of numerous procedures on a single device. The applied voltage plays an important role in this study. A low voltage will diminish the ionization effect happening within the droplet. Insufficient ionization will further cause the inability of droplet movement. Therefore, a high voltage must be applied to initiate droplet movement. This study focuses on high voltage switching system for electrowetting process. Results achieved shown that MOSFET IRF 740 acted as the best switching component for the system. Besides, this study proves the feasibility of electrowetting by describing the fabrication and testing of different dielectric layers using high voltage switching system. As for the coating of dielectric layer, cooking oil showed the most noticeable results out of all the material

The Paradox of Free Market Democracy: Rethinking Development Policy

Markets and democracy are the twin pillars of prevailing development orthodoxy. Many have explored the ways- theoretical, historical, and empirical -in which these two pillars are said to reinforce each other. By contrast, this Article will focus on an inherent instability in free market democracy. For a long time, leading political philosophers and economists held that market capitalism and democracy could coexist, if at all, only in fundamental tension with one another. Markets would produce enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, while democracy, by empowering the poor majority, would inevitably lead to convulsive acts of expropriation and confiscation. In Adam Smith\u27s words, For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor .... The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. Madison warned against the danger to the rights of property posed by an equality & universality of suffrage, vesting compleat power over property in hands without a share in it. David Ricardo was willing to extend suffrage only to that part of [the people] which cannot be supposed to have any interest in overturning the rights of property. Thomas Babington Macaulay went further, portraying universal suffrage as incompatible with property and consequently incompatible with civilization. From this point of view, free market democracy is a paradox, a contradiction in terms