a short comment on the history of administrative law and michael stolleis premise of continuous improvement inherent in this view. The past is used to illustrate the splendid qualities of the present. Stolleis suggests an alternative view, saying that legal changes are the product of a variety of factors which are neither ‘necessary’ nor ‘natural’. No, political, economic, and intellectual processes do not unfold deterministically or in parallel, nor are they dependent on one another in a chain of strict causality. Jurisprudence is a complex social process of interaction.3 What of convergence today? There are several evident trends. Internationalism is under challenge from nationalism, liberalism from calls for a strong man, the rule of law from the rejection of the independence of courts and judges. History does not proceed along a predetermined road; it can go in one direction or in quite a different one. And what of excellence? Has Western law ‘developed’? Has it grown better and better, marching inexorably onwards and upwards, an anthropomorphic entity which has fulfilled itself through history. ‘Das Recht entwickelt sich.’ One aspect is that modern Western law is said to promote freedom of movement. Patrick Glenn asks, freedom of movement for whom? In the face of government-funded means of mass transport, he sees Western states erecting enormous and efficient barriers to deny others access to national territory.4 This is a feature of administrative law on the international level. It brings to light the contradictory, Janus-faced character of administrative law; benefits and coercion in the same heady cocktail. The discipline has not consistently promoted individual freedom and empowerment. Back in 1830, Tocqueville noted that it was exactly ‘those democratic peoples who have introduced freedom in the sphere of politics who also increased despotism in the administrative sphere’.5 The protection of individual rights certainly did not characterize the early history of Swedish social law. In the nineteenth century, the interaction between criminal law and social law, combinedwith an inconsistent interpretation 3 Michael Stolleis, A history of public law in Germany, 1914–1945, tr. Thomas Dunlap (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 3–4. 4 H. Patrick Glenn, Legal traditions of the world (3rd edn, Oxford: OUP, 2007), 162. 5 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer &Max Lerner, tr. George Lawrence (London: Fontana 1968), ii. 69 (first pub. 1835–1840). 179
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