The essays in Democracy and the Rule of Law (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy) come across as a collection of authors synthesizing books that they've written and published elsewhere. Nonetheless, it is a very nice way to sample some of the literature in this field. Some of the essays, particularly the first few, tend a bit too much towards the legal theory and less on the institutional side. I particularly enjoyed Robert Barros' essays on constitutionalism in Pinochet's Chile - he provides a fascinating argument for how institutions and law can in fact bind dictators under certain conditions. Now, this book did come out before Tom Ginsburg's Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases, and the literature on law and politics has only exploded since then. Still, I'd recommend this book to anybody interested in the field.
Critics agree that much of Southeast Asia desperately needs judicial reform and rule of law. Yet, there is remarkably little comparative scholarship on law and legal institutions in the region. In this blog, I'll follow constitutional developments in Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
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