Academic

White on Judicial Reform in Mongolia

By Lawrence Solum

Brent T. White (University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law) has posted Rotten to the Core: Project Capture and the Failure of Judicial Reform in Mongolia (East Asia Law Review, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Despite claims by international donor agencies that judicial reform efforts in Mongolia have been a great success, this article argues that Mongolian courts continue to grossly lack integrity, transparency, and accountability ? and are perceived by the Mongolian public as more corrupt today than when donor-funded judicial reform efforts began almost a decade ago. This article further argues that the failure of judicial reform in Mongolia stems in significant part from the ?capture? of donor-funded judicial reform efforts by elites within the Mongolian judicial sector. It concludes that the inherent tendency for project capture in the ?institution-building? approach to judicial reform that international donor agencies favor should add to calls to limit the approach in favor of bottom-up efforts to push for meaningful judicial reform.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 01, 2009 (boomark / email).