Law-implementation gaps arise from misreading, internal contradiction, or resistance

Evidence

This book seeks to understand the nature of the discrepancy between the plan and its execution, between the law and its implementation that Mitchell takes to be due only to the very nature of modern institutions of power and their representations. By looking at the specific Egyptian context where these modern devices were applied and basing itself on an imposing and impressive institution of power, this book offers alternative explanations of the nature of this gap that separated model from reality. Specifically, it is concerned with the question of whether discrepancies arose as a result of misreadings of the law by government officials, scribes or bureaucrats, whether they were caused by internal contradictions in the letter of the law itself that could only (or more easily) be detected on implementation, or whether they were the result of resistance by those on whom the law was applied. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Threefold causal taxonomy of implementation gaps maps onto wider questions about Ottoman and Egyptian administrative effectiveness relevant to the reader’s military-performance interest.