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/ Dec 29,2009
The First Five Centuries are the Hardest
+ Brandon Fuller
In the 1960s, economic development experts spoke of the benefits from letting each country develop its own technology. By the 1980s, it was clear how foolish it was to ask each country to reinvent each technology. Countries began experimenting with higher degrees of economic openness, leveraging technology and competition from abroad to drive development and reduce poverty.
Yet today, discussions about economic development still presume that each country must reinvent a local system of governance, with police, judges, and prosecutors who are strong enough to enforce the law yet accountable enough to obey it themselves. Honduras is now challenging this presumption. In a recent post for NPR’s Planet Money blog, we discuss Honduras’s bold new approach. Here’s an excerpt:
Today, it is widely assumed each country must establish the rule of law on its own. There’s just one problem with this prescription, which Gordon Brown summed up nicely: in establishing the rule of law, the first five centuries are always the hardest. Some societies have already been down this long and arduous path. Why can’t Hondurans leverage their experience?With broad political support, the congress in Honduras recently created a new legal entity: la Región Especial de Desarrollo (RED). A RED is an independent reform zone that will offer jobs and safety to Honduran families that have neither. Officials in the RED will be able to partner with foreign governments in such critical areas as policing, jurisprudence, and transparency.
Read more here.