Lots of different points...
>From Charles Ferguson to Luigi Zingales there is recognition that the ruling class has become increasingly predatory and criminal. It raises interesting questions about the nature of the rule of law. For Acemoglu and Robinson it is the foundation of inclusive institutions. Extractive institutions are, for them, extractive by virtue of both economic and political means. Yet cannot institutions that are inclusive and consistent with the rule of law facilitate exploitation if not extraction by extra-economic or openly coercive means? Is not the rule of law only formal once economic power is concentrated and labor power commodified? Is it no surprise that common moral notions are not upset by the fact of exploitation as common moral notions are themselves only idealisations of the extant relations of production? I also wonder what we are to make of democratic bodies running up against personifications of the rule of law, namely judges. I think here of the reactionary role played by the S.Ct during the New Deal, and in the present. If inclusive institutions include the rule of law and respect for the judiciary, then inclusive institutions are not necessarily democratic, i.e. inclusive?
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