In the previous two modules you looked at the cultural and financial situation of your reference country.  Now will be looking at the legal and political environment of your country and how these factors impact doing business.

As part of your research, keep in mind that several organizations publish various rankings and indices of political and legal factors in the major countries in the world. One example of rankings is the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators page (http://info(dot)worldbank(dot)org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home).  This webpage includes rankings on factors relating the legal and political system such as rule of law, regulatory quality, and political stability.  Rankings are given from 0 to 100 on each of these aspects.

The World Bank also does some rankings of the ease of doing business in countries across the world.  Their doingbusiness.org has detailed reports on most countries on different aspects of doing business.  While they look at many different factors, some of these relate to the legal system such as ease of enforcing contracts or getting a business license.  It is worth looking up your country on this webpage to get an idea of how friendly your country’s legal system is to doing business. In addition to the Doing Business report, Transparency International does an annual report on corruption around the world and their rankings can be found at transparency.org.

But don’t just look at quantitative rankings of your country, do additional research to get an overall picture of the legal and political system beyond just a numerical score. Once you are finished doing your research on this country of your choice, write a two to three page paper covering the following issues:

1. The type of government and level of political stability in your country, and whether or not the political  system is conducive to doing business
2. The legal/regulatory system in this country and whether or not it is conducive to doing business
3. The level of corruption in your country, and the impact of corruption on doing business in this country

SLP Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don't go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.