The future of law in a global economy

In this paper I challenge the notion that an emerging global legal culture modeled on US legal practices will necessarily come to dominate global legal practices in the economic sphere. Rather, I argue that the ascendance of Asian economic power will have significant implications for the sorts of legal as well as business institutions that are likely to dominate in the next century. Specifically, I argue that Chinese business culture, with its emphasis on informal relationships and flexible organization, has a strong affinity for the new forms of flexible production that characterize an important and growing portion of the world economy. Drawing on world-systems theory, research on Chinese business organization and culture, and my own fieldwork, I argue that the 'legal convergence' hypothesis may well be premature: that the rise of the East Asian economies, linked together through the Chinese business diaspora, may well herald not only the decline of North American and European global economic dominance, but along with it the hegemony of their associated legal forms.