Check out the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in new forms of governance?

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Debate of the article titled The Honduran ZEDE Law, from ideation to action from 2021, by Jeffrey Mason, Carl Peterson, and Daniela Ivette Cano, published in the Journal of Special Jurisdictions.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Niklas Anzinger in episode 386 talking about the opportunities in the Prospera Honduras governance experiment.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how new forms of governance in special economic zones could work. This article presents the legal framework for the Honduran special economic zone, highlighting and contrasting economic and governance models within this innovative legal framework.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: Honduras has struggled to attract the investment needed to spur sustained economic growth in recent decades, and as a result remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. To attract greater foreign investment, the Honduran government passed a groundbreaking special economic zone (SEZ) law in 2012 creating Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (Zones for Employment and Economic Development) or ZEDEs. Among the most innovative special jurisdictions in the world, ZEDEs grant sweeping legal and regulatory autonomy to allow for improved governance and economic competitiveness, in order to attract greater investment in Honduras. In this paper, we detail the political and legislative history of the ZEDE law, offer a textual analysis of the ZEDE statute, discuss the principal objections to the ZEDE law and responses to those objections, and provide case studies of the first two ZEDEs.

Connecting episodes:

• No.293R – Rethinking the governance of urban infrastructural transformations: a synthesis of emerging approaches
• No.294 – Interview with Erick A. Brimen about Prospera Honduras

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