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Forgetting Lochner In The Journey From Plan To Market: The Framing Effect Of The Market Rhetoric In Market-Oriented Reforms, Joel M. Ngugi

Joel M Ngugi

Since the 1980s the developing world has been undergoing a transition styled by the World Bank as a journey from “Plan” to “Market.” This article argues, first, that rhetorically, this transition parallels a transition described by Legal Anthropologist, Henry Sumner Maine more than a century ago, as a progressive movement from “Status” to “Contract.” Second, the article demonstrates that this transition has been accompanied by a Lochnerian vision of management of the relationship between the state and the market. This vision obscures settled “lessons” about the role of and interaction between the state and the market in the service of …