Dilemmas on Promoting the Rule of Law

Abstract

Related to the previous chapter’s analysis of human rights is the effort to build the rule of law, the nonviolent system upon which human rights are protected. NGO activities to promote the rule of law vary not only as to jurisdiction, but also substance, from promoting human rights, domestic crime, judicial reform, and international trafficking, to administrative law and parliamentary reform. The rule of law is required for democracy in definitional terms, though empirically, all functioning, as well as aspiring, democracies have significant rule-of-law challenges. When adequately functional and legitimate, the rule of law promotes peace by channeling nonviolent, legal-process alternatives to violent conflicts. Like democracy, appeals to the rule of law can generate legitimacy, even for authoritarian regimes, which do not follow the rule of law in their constitutions. Regimes that have not followed the rule of law for decades may still pretend to follow it, as well as hold elections with universal suffrage.1 The danger of illiberal democracy, where the state and non-state actors use arbitrary and unlawful violence while holding elections of varying credibility can follow from democratic regime changes established partly because of mandated peacebuilding.2 Moreover, NGO pressure for legal accountability can convince lawbreaking regimes either not to hand over power or to rig elections in favor of those who would not prosecute them.