Quantifying Law: Legal Indicator Projects and the Reproduction of Neoliberal Common Sense

Abstract

Development thinking in the past two decades has explicitly embraced law as an engine of development. This legal turn has been accompanied by a dramatic expansion of efforts to measure and quantify legal systems. Against claims that legal indicators are neutral, technical descriptions of the legal world, this article argues that legal indicators do not merely reflect legal reality; their construction and deployment are central to the continuing diffusion of neo-liberalism as development common sense. The article considers the two most prominent projects to quantify law in the service of economic development - the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators and Doing Business indicators - and argues that these indicators reproduce a narrow neo-liberal conception of law as a platform for private business and entrepreneurial activity and institutional support for a system of laissez faire markets.

Keywords: legal indicators, law and development, legal reform, World Bank, rule of law, worldwide governance indicators, doing business, neoliberalism, governance

JEL Classification: B20, K20, K31, K33, K40, O10