Diversity in Translation: The European Union’s Development Cooperation and the Promotion of Legal Order in Plural Societies

Abstract

Rather than looking at translation issues related to the management of cultural and religious diversity under state law in Europe (and all its manifold, internal differences), as is the focus of the other articles in this collection, this contribution analyses Europe as an actor that seeks to engage different legal and cultural systems around the world and have its legal principles translated into non-European settings. More precisely, it focuses on recent attempts by the European External Action Service (EEAS) to promote human rights and the rule of law through non-state justice institutions in Bangladesh. My central question is how and under which conditions European understandings of human rights and the rule of law are translated. The article develops a theoretical account of such translation processes by drawing on scholarship in political science and legal anthropology. It then turns to the long trajectory of European engagements with non-state justice institutions that originated in processes of European colonial expansion and its correlative efforts to alter different legal systems in most of the world. The empirical core of the article turns to its central case and focuses on translations of human rights and the rule of law in Bangladesh. After having introduced the complex legal landscape of the country, the article maps contemporary donor interventions in non-state justice systems and analyses the translations of discursive frames and material artefacts that unfold as these projects materialise in the country.