Four Cardinal Questions (and Answers of a Sort)

Abstract

Justice and the rule of law are regularly cited as fundamental to addressing so many development challenges: poor investment climate, conflict and insecurity, gender inequality, poverty, and low human development outcomes. The role of justice institutions in underpinning development has especially come to the fore in fragile and conflict-affected situations. The authors suggest that there is quite a lot, but it requires starting with different questions. Drawing from the Bank’s justice strategy new directions in justice Reform and the experience in the justice for the poor program, especially in fragile and conflict-affected situations, the authors have distilled an answer, or rather a process. Four simple questions to guide toward the not so simple path of promoting just development are: question 1: what is the justice problem?; question 2: how is the justice problem being managed?; question 3: under what conditions will more effective and legitimate institutions to manage the justice problem emerge?; and question 4: what is the appropriate role for external assistance?