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Informal Institutions (informal + institution)
Selected AbstractsPopulation Growth and the Environment in Africa: Local Informal Institutions, the Missing Link,ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2002Valentina Mazzucato Abstract: Population and environment debates regarding Africa, whether Malthusian or Boserupian in nature, focus on population levels as the driving force behind the relationship between environment and society. This article argues, instead, that how people adjust to their rise in numbers is more important than are population levels. It focuses on the role of local informal institutions, such as land tenure systems, but also on customs, norms, and networks, and their change over time in mediating the relationship between people and the environment. The article is based on fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1998 in the Sahelian and Sudano-Sahelian zones of Africa, as well as on a review of colonial documents pertaining to the area written in the first half of the twentieth century. The article concludes that adaptations made to local, informal institutions within the past century have enabled an environmentally sustainable land use within the context of a rising population and growing scarcity of natural resources. [source] Insurance for Good Losers and the Survival of Chile's ConcertaciónLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2005John M. Carey ABSTRACT In the transition from military rule to democracy, the government of Augusto Pinochet bequeathed to Chile a unique electoral law by which all legislative seats are contested in two-member districts. A key implication of this rule is that in order to secure legislative majorities, coalitions have to put their strongest candidates in the most precarious electoral list positions. This generates a divergence of interests between coalitions and politicians. Chile's largest coalition, the Concertación, has resolved the dilemma by providing appointed posts to unsuccessful congressional candidates who accept personal political risk on the coalition's behalf. This study argues that this insurance system has provided the critical glue to hold the coalition together since Chile's transition to democracy in 1990. Recent changes in the electoral environment could threaten the Concertación's control over the appointed posts that have sustained this informal institution. This could jeopardize the Concertación's cohesion during the process of negotiating coalition candidate lists for the 2005 legislative elections. [source] The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women's Property RightsDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2001Lynn Khadiagala Advocates of alternative dispute resolution argue that informal, community-based institutions are better placed to provide inexpensive, expedient and culturally appropriate forms of justice. In 1988, the Ugandan government extended judicial capacity to local councils (LCs) on similar grounds. Drawing on attempts by women in southwestern Uganda to use the LCs to adjudicate property disputes, this article investigates why popular justice has failed to protect the customary property rights of women. The gap between theory and practice arises out of misconceptions of community. The tendency to ascribe a morality and autonomy to local spaces obscures the ability of elites to use informal institutions for purposes of social control. In the light of women's attempts to escape the ,rule of persons' and to seek out arbiters whom they associate with the ,rule of law', it can be argued that the utility of the state to ordinary Ugandans should be reconsidered. [source] Industrial Agglomeration and Development: A Survey of Spatial Economic Issues in East Asia and a Statistical Analysis of Chinese RegionsECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2003C. Cindy Fan Abstract: In this article, we explore the issue of industrial agglomeration and its relationship to economic development and growth in the less-developed countries of East Asia. We present theoretical arguments and secondary empirical evidence as to why we should have strong expectations about finding a positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance. We also review evidence from the literature on the roles of formal and informal institutions in East Asian regional economic systems. We then focus specifically on the case of China. We argue that regional development in China has much in common with regional development in other East Asian economies, although there are also important contrasts because of China's history of socialism and its recent trend toward economic liberalization. Through a variety of statistical investigations, we substantiate (in part) the expected positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance in China. We show that many kinds of manufacturing sectors are characterized by a strong positive relationship between spatial agglomeration and productivity. This phenomenon is especially marked in sectors and regions where liberalization has proceeded rapidly. We consider the relevance of our comments about industrial clustering and economic performance for policy formulation in China and the less-developed countries of East Asia. [source] Population Growth and the Environment in Africa: Local Informal Institutions, the Missing Link,ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2002Valentina Mazzucato Abstract: Population and environment debates regarding Africa, whether Malthusian or Boserupian in nature, focus on population levels as the driving force behind the relationship between environment and society. This article argues, instead, that how people adjust to their rise in numbers is more important than are population levels. It focuses on the role of local informal institutions, such as land tenure systems, but also on customs, norms, and networks, and their change over time in mediating the relationship between people and the environment. The article is based on fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1998 in the Sahelian and Sudano-Sahelian zones of Africa, as well as on a review of colonial documents pertaining to the area written in the first half of the twentieth century. The article concludes that adaptations made to local, informal institutions within the past century have enabled an environmentally sustainable land use within the context of a rising population and growing scarcity of natural resources. [source] Entrepreneurship in Russia and China: The Impact of Formal Institutional VoidsENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 3 2010Sheila M. Puffer Transition economies are often characterized by underdeveloped formal institutions, often resulting in an unstable environment and creating a void usually filled by informal ones. Entrepreneurs in transition environments thus face more uncertainty and risk than those in more developed economies. This article examines the relationship of institutions and entrepreneurship in Russia and China in the context of institutional theory by analyzing private property as a formal institution, as well as trust and blat/guanxi as informal institutions. This article thus contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship and institutional theory by focusing on these topics in transition economies, and by emphasizing how their relationship differs from that in developed economies. We conclude that full convergence toward entrepreneurs' reliance on formal institutions may not readily occur in countries like Russia and China due to the embeddedness of informal institutions. Instead, such countries and their entrepreneurs may develop unique balances between informal and formal institutions that better fit their circumstances. Implications for the theory and practice of entrepreneurship in such environments are also offered. [source] ,It Takes Two Hands to Clap': How Gaddi Shepherds in the Indian Himalayas Negotiate Access to GrazingJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 1 2007RICHARD AXELBY This article examines the effects of state intervention on the workings of informal institutions that coordinate the communal use and management of natural resources. Specifically it focuses on the case of the nomadic Gaddi shepherds and official attempts to regulate their access to grazing pastures in the Indian Himalayas. It is often predicted that the increased presence of the modern state critically undermines locally appropriate and community-based resource management arrangements. Drawing on the work of Pauline Peters and Francis Cleaver, I identify key instances of socially embedded ,common' management institutions and explain the evolution of these arrangements through dynamic interactions between individuals, communities and the agents of the state. Through describing the ,living space' of Gaddi shepherds across the annual cycle of nomadic migration with their flocks I explore the ways in which they have been able to creatively reinterpret external interventions, and suggest how contemporary arrangements for accessing pasture at different moments of the annual cycle involve complex combinations of the formal and the informal, the ,traditional' and the ,modern'. [source] Introduction to "In Focus: Global Change and Adaptation in Local Places"AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009Donald R. Nelson ABSTRACT In recognition of unavoidable changes that human actions are producing in our environment, the term adaptation has become ubiquitous in the environmental and climate-change literature. Human adaptation is a field with a significant history in anthropology, yet anthropological contributions to the burgeoning field of climate change remain limited. This "In Focus" section presents studies of local adaptations to climate variation and change. Each is concerned with current environmental challenges and future environmental change, and each study is placed within a wider context that includes processes of globalization and integration into market economies, formal and informal institutions, and disasters. These studies highlight the challenges involved in understanding complex adaptations under conditions of stress. They also illustrate how anthropologists engage the larger climate-change and human-adaptation discussions and enhance our ability to respond to the challenges of a changing environment. [source] | ||||||||||