Rationalized Myths and Their Historical Origins: On The Colonial Borrowing and Uses Of English Laws

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Institutional Encounters

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of English laws upon the colonial ordinances passed by the Legislative Councils of Jamaica and the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca) in order to re-examine the historical background of new institutional theory. While the scholarship of Meyer, DiMaggio, Powell and their colleagues accounted for the global diffusion of bureaucratic forms in the post-WWII period, institutional isomorphism could also be found in the making of colonial states within the extensive British Empire. Within this imperial context, the Colonial Office could shape colonial legislation through its coercive and normative authority – beyond the reception of English common law and statutes in the colonies, colonial legislation could be shaped through the issuance of circulars or instructions to Governors, the official disallowance of ordinances and control over the composition of colonial Legislative Councils. Given such favorable conditions for institutional isomorphism, this essay seeks to historicize new institutional theory by examining lawmaking in two Crown Colonies that later formed the independent nation-states of Jamaica and Singapore. I begin my investigation of the laws of Jamaica and the Straits Settlements since they were reconstituted as Crown Colonies in 1866 and 1867, respectively. Focusing on the making and transformation of colonial constitutions and the spread of Contagious Diseases ordinances, my theoretical argument is that the recursive processes of lawmaking in the Crown Colonies depended on colonial officials and subjects’ re-articulation of formal rules to their local contexts. Critically, colonial laws diverged in their uses and meanings from their English origins.

Author

• Jack Jin Gary Lee, University of California, San Diego