Informal Politics and the State

Abstract

Many theories of the state are implicitly premised on modernization theory—a linear transition from agrarian to industrial society and increasing centralization and extractive capacity of the state, while preexisting societal networks are eradicated or gradually absorbed into the political system. As a society becomes wealthier and more mobile, particularist allegiances are broadened to encompass the whole polity and rulers increas ingly govern to the benefit of the citizenry within the framework of stable political institutions. Political processes in systems that approach this ideal type may be under stood through the study of formal institutions, in which political actors work within con straints specified by formally codified rules that are (usually) consistently and equitably enforced. A research strategy typically involves analyzing a limited and easily identifi able set of institutions that produce probabilistically predictable outputs, under the assumption that consequential political behaviors governed by those institutions can be observed and that their influence on policy outcomes is transparent and measureable. Clearly, this description does not characterize all political systems in the world today, and perhaps approximates only a minority of them. Formal institutions are ubiquitous— post-World War II international norms ensure that even weakly institutionalized states and nondemocratic regimes adopt the formal trappings of industrialized democracies'— but they may not function everywhere as specified on paper (or on websites, in the twenty-first century).2 At best, rule enforcement may be inconsistent and the formal institu tions of governance implicated in unpredictable or inequitable outcomes. At worst, parts of the state can be appropriated by political factions, identity-based groups, or patron-client networks, and exploited to benefit a small minority at the expense of the majority. To make sense of political processes and outcomes in such contexts, paying attention to the 351