This project makes an original theoretical contribution to legal sociology and political economy by reconceptualising commissions of inquiry as constitutive institutions of modern capitalism rather than ad hoc mechanisms of accountability. Drawing on a decade of empirical research centred on South Africa, the study develops the first materialist theory of public inquiries written from the global South. It demonstrates how commissions function as quasi-legal technologies through which capitalist states manage crises of legitimacy arising from labour conflict, state violence and breakdowns in accumulation. Moving beyond dominant approaches that assess commissions in terms of truth, justice, or efficacy, the project treats them as analytical lenses through which to understand the political economy of legality itself. By analysing commission archives longitudinally and comparatively—from early British factory commissions, through colonial inquiries, to post-apartheid South Africa—the research reveals recurring patterns in how law is mobilised to stabilise class relations when the legitimacy of coercive state power is threatened. The project intervenes in Law and Political Economy scholarship by extending theories of legal “coding” to moments of crisis, showing how commissions become sites where fractions of capital, labour and the state contest the meaning of legality. In doing so, it offers a generalisable framework globally.
2027