Global laws are an important inspiration for commercial law reforms around the world. Much analysis of this phenomenon emphasizes the capacity of regulatory élites, such as lawmakers, courts and lawyers, to adapt global laws to local conditions. What is often absent from this top-down analysis...

Over recent years, the global diffusion of legal and regulatory regimes has dramatically increased. Much of the increase is the direct result of initiatives funded in the name of ‘law and development’. The world over, domestic legislation and regulatory reforms borrow heavily from...

Having already abandoned a central command economy and embraced the “mixed market” policies of Doi Moi (Renovation), Vietnamese planners now face a dilemma. Ambitious law reform has created a framework of what are, ostensibly, rights-based commercial laws. Although essential to the...

Following doi moi (renovation) market reforms in 1986, the Vietnamese government urgently required commercial laws capable of regulating the rapidly emerging private sector. Along with contract and property laws, lawmakers considered company law essential for a market-based legal framework....

This chapter explores the central question: Is Vietnam transitioning out of socialism and/or transforming socialism? For decades, commentators have confidently predicted that Vietnam is transitioning out of socialism towards ‘market-Leninism’. This chapter argues that political, legal and...

As conventionally understood, anti-corruption programs rely on legal rules to define and control the abuse of official power for private gain. This study explores the limits to law-based standards of corruption where state officials obscure bribery and the abuse of power beneath a veneer of...

Economic and political reforms have triggered the return of individual property in socialist Asia brought these countries into the globalized economy that is characterized by legally protected property rights. Reforms have also provoked debate in the media, academic circles, and among state...

For twenty years, legal, economic, and social reforms have unleashed land disputes across Vietnam. The most acrimonious conflicts, which occasionally escalate into violent confrontations, concern the compulsory acquisition of land by the state. From the perspective of orthodox property law...

Over the last three decades, transnational certification standards have proliferated to fill perceived ‘governance gaps’ in developing countries. Transnational non-government organisations and private standards-setting agencies have developed standards that cover a vast range of areas such...

This chapter explores how East Asian states integrate customary claims to land into statutory land tenure systems. Studies show that state-centered land systems, which connect legal recognition of property rights to state territorial authority, often fragment and subordinate customary possessory...