ideology of “law and order,” the belief that more numerous and stricter laws lead to a stronger rule of law
Umm, do you have a cite or example of someone saying that NUMBER of laws is the key to law and order? All the discussion I’ve seen has been about enforcement of major categories of misbehavior, and addition of fairly broad, unspecific norms that are not currently in law.
In many places, the fine-grained detailed regulation and legislation is a different pathology, more pseudo-technocratic, not ‘law and order’.
Don’t read to much into it. What I meant was that common naive attitude like: “Are people are doing X? Let’s punish it by law. Are they still doing it? Let’s punish it some more.”
The issue in Eastern Europe being described seems to more fit the “rule of law” vs “rule by law” phenomeon, often used when describing authoritarian regimes, and particularly China. Where the law exists as a tool for the state to deploy at its discretion, not a consistently applied set of rules that limits them.
Generally the solution to this is not fewer laws, as that also leaves the authorities with great discretion, but to have strong counterbalancing institutions like an independent judiciary, press, opposition parties, etc. that will force them to act within the law.
Umm, do you have a cite or example of someone saying that NUMBER of laws is the key to law and order? All the discussion I’ve seen has been about enforcement of major categories of misbehavior, and addition of fairly broad, unspecific norms that are not currently in law.
In many places, the fine-grained detailed regulation and legislation is a different pathology, more pseudo-technocratic, not ‘law and order’.
Don’t read to much into it. What I meant was that common naive attitude like: “Are people are doing X? Let’s punish it by law. Are they still doing it? Let’s punish it some more.”
The issue in Eastern Europe being described seems to more fit the “rule of law” vs “rule by law” phenomeon, often used when describing authoritarian regimes, and particularly China. Where the law exists as a tool for the state to deploy at its discretion, not a consistently applied set of rules that limits them.
Generally the solution to this is not fewer laws, as that also leaves the authorities with great discretion, but to have strong counterbalancing institutions like an independent judiciary, press, opposition parties, etc. that will force them to act within the law.