Legal pluralism: The regulation of traditional medicine in the Cook Islands

This chapter examines the role and power of law in development in countries with plural regulatory orders through a case study of the regulation of traditional medicine in Cook Islands. This case study gives rise to a series of observations relevant to regulatory theory in general in particular, concerning the utility of legal pluralism as a theoretical framework in developing states, the need for detailed empirical research to understand the operation of non-state regulatory orders and the way in which different regulatory orders permit and foreclose different levels of agency, empower different stakeholders, reflect different institutional realities and draw on varying underlying values and principles. This chapter is based principally on fieldwork conducted in Cook Islands in November 2014 and, more broadly, on fieldwork conducted since 2011 in Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu investigating the impact of intellectual property laws on development in Pacific Island countries