Market Economy, Democracy, or Rule of Law? What Should Be Prioritized to Promote Development?

Since WWII, several trillion USD have been given to developing countries in official and other development aid. Yet the vast majority of these countries - at least if we look at the vast majority of the people in these countries - is stuck in abject poverty. Most commonly, we cite the lack of democracy as the principal cause of this problem and, whenever we do interfere in a country, we push first and foremost for reasonably free elections as the cure-all. This "liberal peace building" and the premise of "early elections, privatization, trade liberalization" has failed and continues to fail pretty much without fail. The article argues that we put the cart before the horse in development aid and that Rule of Law needs to be established before anything else.In a subsequent piece, published in the Fordham International Law Journal and also available on my SSRN author page, I continue the analysis by discussing what Rule of Law actually means