Offering an anthropological perspective, this book explores the changing relations between law and governance, examining how changes in the structure of governance affect the relative social significance of law within situations of legal pluralism.

Professor Franz von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is Honorary Professor for Ethnology at the University of Leipzig, and Honorary Professor for Legal Pluralism at the University of Halle. Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Professor in Anthropology of Law, Faculty of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Law & Society Association. Julia Eckert is Associate Professor and Head of Research Group, in the Project Group on Legal Pluralism, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her interests are in the areas of anthropology of modern state organisation, legal anthropology, group conflict, collective identities, nationalism, democracy.

Contents: Rules of law and laws of ruling: law and governance between past and future, Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Julia Eckert; Reflections on the anthropology of law, governance, and sovereignty, John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff; Private military companies and state sovereignty: regulating transnational flows of violence and capital, Diana Sidakis; Laws of suspicion: legal status, space, and the impossibility of separation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Tobias Kelly; Ritual and rule in the periphery: state violence and local governance in a Peruvian comunidad, Monique Nuitjen and David Lorenzo; Government, business and chiefs: ambiguities of social justice through land restitution in South Africa, Anne Hellum and Bill Derman; Re-scaling governance for better resource management?, Melanie G. Wiber and Arthur Bull; The governance of children: from welfare justice to proactive regulation in the Scottish Children's Hearings system, Anne Griffiths and Randy F. Kandel; Migration and integration of 3rd-country nationals in Europe: the need for the development of an efficient, effective and legitimate system of governance, Marie-Claire Foblets; From the revenue rule to soft law and back again: the consequences for 'society' of the social governance of international tax competition, Bill Maurer; The law of the project: government and 'good governance' at the World Bank in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li; Corruption as governance? Law, transparency and appointment procedures in Italian universities, David Nelken; Index.