Theorizing Formal Pluralism: Quantification of Legal Pluralism for Spatio – Temporal Analysis

Abstract

The different types of legal pluralism have been extensively studied by many anthropologists and legal scholars. But what about the intensity or degree of pluralism? Does this always stay the same or does it ever change over time? Legal pluralism is the reflection of complex human interactions in our normative universe. It changes as a society evolves. With these changes in its form and structure, the degree of plurality also changes. As a result, societies constantly become ‘more’ or ‘less’ pluralistic as they evolve. In order to capture these spatio-temporal variations in degrees of legal pluralism, this paper aims to introduce a simple technique of quantification which measures the differing degrees of legal pluralism both over time and across localities. The major benefit of quantification will be to enable those students of legal pluralism who wish to undertake more macro-sociological and cross-national analyses to reach some theoretical generalizations and compare different legal systems at a higher level of abstraction. Along the same lines, the paper also offers a number of theoretical, methodological and ontological novelties to better facilitate a diachronic analysis of legal pluralism.