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eform, as Box 5.3 indicates.Post-conflict states present a special situationfor legal empowerment even if the central statehas nominally reasserted its claim to authority. Itis particularly vexing to figure out how to returnproperty after its rightful owners have fled or beenkilled by one side or the other in a civil war. Oftenthe disputes over homes and other assets are sointense they must be addressed at once to sustainpeace. 6 The international community has recognisedinstitutional reform of the legal infrastructureis essential for reconstruction and reconciliation.Yet, a realistic timeframe for recreating a justicesystem following serious armed conflict with formalcourts, trained judges and a retrained police forceis close to 20 years (Samuels 2006: 19). That is along period for implementation with many chancesfor administrative operation to deviate from initialpolicy intent.Merilee Grindle (2007) proposes an elementarytypology of political systems, adapted here in Table5.3, right, which is a useful place to begin to considerwhat sort of Legal Empowerment of the Poorpolicies are feasible within different countries. Thethree left-hand side column headings reflect thepolitical and administrative dimensions of regimes,with the far right-hand column very roughly indicatingthe sorts of Legal Empowerment of the Poor initiativesthat might be appropriate; the rows are fivecommon regime patterns or syndromes. These areheuristic, but they suggest the possibilities for legalempowerment are greatest in states that are morecompetitive and better institutionalised. As Grindlepoints out, there is simply more to build upon inthese countries than in weaker states. A startingpoint for Legal Empowerment of the Poor practitioners,then, is to debate honestly where a particularcountry can be located among the common patternsof political administrative systems, and use theinformation to think creatively but realistically aboutwhat empowering reforms will work in that context.The typology in Table 5.3, right, is educative, notexhaustive; the capsule policy prescriptions in thelast column on the right are not meant to cover allthe possibilities, which are too numerous to capturein a simple table. The reality on the ground is thatpolicy champions may need to pursue a variety oftactics in every country, custom fit to the differentstakeholders, to support their overall strategy.That means mobilising the grassroots, the communityorganisations, the professional groups, andother interests to counterbalance opponents ofLegal Empowerment of the Poor trying to derail theagenda. The prospect of working with state actorsvaries according to the administrative capacity ofthe government.InformalityAcross-cutting dimension of the policy environmentis the extent of informality — in theeconomy, in the polity, and in the juridical system.People, organisations, and firms can operate underconditions of informality for some purposes andunder conditions of formality for others. LegalEmpowerment of the Poor reformers must besensitive to the vulnerability of informal empowermentmechanisms to cooptation and domination byelites and formal organisations. Let us look at thephenomenon and consider the impact on implementationof Legal Empowerment of the Poor.In the economic sense, informality refers to smallscale,self-financed and unskilled labour-intensiveproductive activities, which the poor use to survive.These pursuits are under-the-table and off-thebooks,and thus are legally defenceless againstmore powerful market interests and are subject tounfair exploitation. This parallel or shadow economyis a vast domain, representing the equivalentof about 40 percent of official economic activityin developing and transition countries, according302