The Silicon Empire Law, Culture and Commerce

Michael Likosky examines the continuities and discontinuities between colonial and present-day high tech transnational legal orders. His concern is specifically with the colonial characteristics of the legal order which underpins the global high tech economy. He distinguishes the democratic and human rights rhetoric of this economy from a reality wherein the legal order is often used to reproduce colonial-type relationships. Just as in the colonial period, the expansion of trans-border commerce overlaps with democratic demands and human rights in complex, multifaceted and paradoxical ways. Through a case study looking at Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, a high tech national development plan and foreign direct investment scheme, he examines how the transnational leaders of the high tech economy along with the Malaysian political elite react when human rights problems threaten to derail commercial plans.

Contents: Foreword; Introduction: cultural imperialism and transnational commerce. Dual Legal Orders: Variation and oligarchic states; Compound corporations; Dual legal orders. High Tech Promises: Proto-Malaysia; Infrastructure for commerce; Culture for commerce; Human rights and commerce; Conclusion: where we are and how we might move forward; Bibliography; Subject index; Index of law cases.

Michael B. Likosky