State and Law in Third World Poverty and Underdevelopment

Abstract

By the twentieth century, societies achieved purposeful social change primarily through the exercise of state power.¹ The paradox of third world poverty amidst potential global plenty, therefore, reflected a failure of the state. This chapter: (1) depicts a model of distorted third world patterns of resource allocation; (2) demonstrates the way the state and the legal order pre-formed the institutions — the repetitive patterns of social behavior — that shaped those resource patterns to benefit ruling oligarchies; (3) argues that merely replacing individual governors cannot alleviate third world poverty and powerlessness; (4) explains why, instead, development requires changing inherited institutions, which, in turn, implies the instrumental use of law; and (5) shows why copying other countries’ laws and institutions rarely worked.