Abstract
In understanding the dynamics of institutional reform in East Asia, it has often been readily assumed that institutional forms will replicate West European patterns.1 This essay, in exploring the nature and dynamics of legal institutions in East Asia, seeks to argue that institutional patterns in East Asia are more incondite than conventional theory would allow. Institutional patterns in East Asia are embedded in a wider structural context, and the specific form they take needs to be understood in a larger framework which includes the nature of state and civil society. This contingent approach to the study of institutional forms in East Asia stands in opposition to the notion that the development of markets will inexorably lead to the constitution of liberal institutions.