TY - JOUR
AU1 - Scheppele, Kim Lane
AB -  Around the world, organizations are developing indicators of the rule of law that measure whether countries have more or less of it. However, such indicators often miss something crucial: interaction effects among the elements that, if recognized appropriately, would send a country from the top to the bottom of the scale. The rule of law is one of the few political desiderata that generate little opposition from any corner of the world. It compels so much agreement because it is a famously fuzzy concept. Push a little on it and it deconstructs into formal criteria (regularity, predictability), narrow institutional programs (building courthouses, training judges), and vague ideals (legality, equality under the law). Indicators often reduce the complex judgment about the level of the rule of law to a few isolated and component parts. How many judges have been trained? How many judicial decisions have been enforced? Does the country guarantee appeals from administrative decisions? Does it offer a chance for all aggrieved parties to be heard? Indicators compiled from checklists are designed to make objective the assessment of whether countries are doing well or badly. However, checklists typically assume there are no interaction effects that undermine the list's 
TI - The Rule of Law and the Frankenstate: Why Governance Checklists Do Not Work
JF - Governance
DO - 10.1111/gove.12049
DA - 2013-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/the-rule-of-law-and-the-frankenstate-why-governance-checklists-do-not-Njs2VyIBCQ
SP - 559
EP - 562
VL - 26
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -