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BookBeviews339 Asian Discourses of Rule of Law: Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France and the U.S. Edited by Randall Peerenboom. London & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Softcover: 479pp. The rule of law rhetoric has spread to many parts ofthe world and more importantly is used vigorously in social, economic and particularly, political theories more than ever before. The conventional belief is that the rule of law engenders political austerity, economic development and social cohesion in a given community. Max Weber attributed the success of capitalism in Europe to the practice of liberal democracy characterized by state accountability and the existence of rational law that induces "calculability" and "predictability". However, his theory has never been systematically tested. The United States and most Western developed countries embrace the liberal democratic orientation of the rule of law, and in the past decades, particularly in the post-World War II era, there have been serious attempts by these countries to instil this political ideology in the developing world. The reason: there is a preconceived notion that the polities of developing countries are dictatorial and therefore individual civil and political rights are stifled. Many critics argue that cognizance of differences in culture, tradition and legal history is rarely taken into consideration, or is simply ignored by the developed countries. Consequently, the behaviour of Western advocates of the rule of law has been labelled as "ethnocentric" and "imperialistic". International economic organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have also been named as guilty parties. This situation has caused friction and continues to strain international relations between the developed and developing countries. In Asia, arguably politics tends to make law subservient. This was witnessed during the eras of Sukarno and Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines and the coup d'états in Thailand. The paternalistic bent of Asian governments has been well documented. To this end, political elites in several ASEAN countries believe that to augment economic development and social cohesion, civil and political rights should reflect more the interests of the collective than the individual. Hence, individual civil and political rights have been seemingly restricted, ifnot withheld. This has been frequently subsumed as "Asian values embedded in the rule of law", which many Western critics consider as propaganda in support of political incumbency. The liberal perspective on the rule of law on the other hand, advocates well-entrenched individual rights and proper checks and 340Book Beviews balances on state-society relations. Hence, today, there are competing versions of the rule of law. That said, there is a general consensus nevertheless over the "thin version" of the rule of law, which assumes that laws must be promulgated in a constitutionally prescribed manner and applied justly and fairly to underscore political and moral legitimacy. Still, there is much divergence ofviews with regard to the philosophical and substantive content of laws, i.e. the "thick version". Invariably, rule of law thinking per se has been fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties, which in turn restricts its analytical function. At present, available literature on the topic is theoretically laden but without much focus on systematic qualitative work that includes credible empirical surveys. Moreover, most such work has not come from Asia (except India); the rule of law thinking has not caught on in the academic, let alone policy circles. Hence, there is a need for more credible research to appreciate and understand the nuances of rule of law discourses in the developed and developing countries with a view to building common space, minimizing misapprehensions, and ensuring the greater good of all. This edited volume by Peerenboom takes a holistic approach towards the rule of law and empirically surveys 14 countries. The volume is the initial component of an ongoing extensive project on the subject, which envisages addressing various substantive laws via conferences and publications. Hence, the volume depicts the general framework for the rule of law in 14 countries in the context of more specific studies to come. On the whole, the papers are laboriously researched as well as judiciously analysed by country experts. At the outset, Peerenboom (chapter 1) conscientiously avoids taking a narrow version of rule of law. To this...

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