The rule of law narrative that emerges from a close examination of the project literature resembles a stylised drama, peopled by familiar actors performing from a limited and well-known repertory. The following chapter examines the themes and actors that habitually reappear on the rule of law stage. The motivating theme is modernisation, providing a distinctive setting and consistent background motif. This setting posits a relation between donor and recipient countries, with the latter aspiring to the conditions in the former, but also intended to further their mutual association to their mutual benefit. The action, which takes place in the host country, takes the form of a morality play dramatising the complementary, if contrasting, obligations of public and private actors: the former must be bound in order that the latter might be free. The plot comprises a series of set ordeals illustrating the virtues of modern government: moral rectitude (anti-corruption), self-discipline (governance) and self-abnegation (privatisation). Other characters central to plot development are the judiciary, civil society and the media – who in different ways reinforce and refine the public–private divide. The stock character of the ‘reform constituency’ in the host country mediates the action; significantly more complex character development is expected of ‘the poor’. The drama's projected ending looks forward to the integration of the state in the global community, having assumed an enabling environment for investment, judicial protections of assets and of political and economic freedoms, without discrimination, and obligations towards other international actors.