‘Law As Accelerator With No Brakes’: The Approach To Corruption In The First and Second Moments of Law and Development Discourse

Abstract

The paper argues that law and development scholarship ran into crisis for its failure to take local contextual considerations into account in formulation and implementation of legal transplantation agenda. It examines the historical development of the law and development scholarship with particular attention to the subject of corruption; what research was done on the place of corruption in development discourse through the various generations of the movement and what impact this may have had on the viability of past, present and possibly future anti-corruption programmes at the international level and nationally with general reference to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where corruption is regarded as one of the biggest challenges. It argues that the market-centre emphasis of the movement has largely benefited the few corrupt and privileged elites to the detriment of the citizens. It therefore calls for a reformulation of transplant institutions that are culture contextualised to drive necessary development in transiting and developing economies.