Informal Institutions and Democracy

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Informal Institutions and DemocracyLessons from Latin America

Edited byg r e t c h e n h e l m k e

s t e v e n l e v i t s k y

The Johns Hopkins University PressBaltimore

2006 The Johns Hopkins University PressAll rights reserved. Published 2006

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataInformal institutions and democracy : lessons from Latin America /

edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky.p. cm.

The volume emerged out of two conferences on informal institutions. The first,entitled Informal Institutions and Politics in the Developing World, was held atHarvard University in April 2002. . . . The second conference, entitled Informal

Institutions and Politics in Latin America: Understanding the Rules of the Game,was held at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre

Dame, in April 2003Pref.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8018-8351-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN 0-8018-8352-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Political cultureLatin AmericaCongresses. 2. DemocratizationLatinAmericaCongresses. 3. DemocracyLatin AmericaCongresses. 4. Politics,

PracticalLatin AmericaCongresses. 5. Latin AmericaPolitics andgovernment1980 I. Helmke, Gretchen, 1967

II. Levitsky, Steven, 1968JL966.I55 2006306.2098dc22

2005032064

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1gretchen helmke and steven levitsky

part i the informal politics ofexecutive-legislative relations

1 Accommodating Informal Institutions and Chilean Democracy 33peter siavelis

2 How Informal Electoral Institutions Shape theBrazilian Legislative Arena 56

scott w. desposato

3 Crafting Legislative Ghost Coalitions in Ecuador:Informal Institutions and Economic Reform in an Unlikely Case 69

andrs meja acosta

part i i informal institutions andelectoral politics

4 Informal Institutions When Formal Contracting Is Prohibited:Campaign Finance in Brazil 87

david samuels

5 The Difficult Road from Caudillismo to Democracy:The Impact of Clientelism in Honduras 106

michelle m. taylor-robinson

vi C o n t e n t s

6 Do Informal Rules Make Democracy Work?Accounting for Accountability in Argentina 125

susan c. stokes

part i i i informal institutions and party politics

7 The Birth and Transformation of the Dedazo in Mexico 143joy langston

8 Election Insurance and Coalition Survival:Formal and Informal Institutions in Chile 160

john m. carey and peter siavelis

9 Informal Institutions and Party Organization in Latin America 178flavia freidenberg and steven levitsky

part iv informal judicial institutions andthe rule of law

10 The Rule of (Non)Law:Prosecuting Police Killings in Brazil and Argentina 201

daniel m. brinks

11 Mexicos Postelectoral Concertacesiones:The Rise and Demise of a Substitutive Informal Institution 227

todd a. eisenstadt

12 Dispensing Justice at the Margins of Formality:The Informal Rule of Law in Latin America 249

donna lee van cott

Conclusion 274gretchen helmke and steven levitsky

AfterwordOn Informal Institutions, Once Again 285

guillermo odonnell

Notes 291References 313

List of Contributors 337Index 341

Preface

Political reality can be compelling. The sweeping regime changes of the 1980sand 1990s brought democratic institutions to virtually every country in Latin Amer-ica, but the quality or performance of those institutions has disappointed both schol-ars and policymakers alike. Military coups have largely disappeared, but presidentscontinue to be forced from office before the end of their mandate; constitutionalliberties have been restored, but security forces kill some citizens with impunity;legislators seem more interested in making money than in making policy; corruptionand clientelism remain widespread, and in many rural (and some urban) areas, therule of law effectively does not exist. This book contends that in order to understandhowand how welldemocratic institutions work in Latin America, scholars mustgo beyond the study of formal institutions and take seriously informal rules of thegame. The book presents a conceptual and theoretical framework for analyzinghow formal and informal institutions interact in new democracies. Although itfocuses on Latin America, its lessons are broadly applicable throughout the develop-ing and postcommunist worlds.

The idea for this volume emerged out of a series of conversations that begannearly a decade ago. As researchers beginning fieldwork in Argentina during themid-1990s, we were struck by the vast gap between the formal institutions we hadcome to study (political parties in one case, courts in the other) and the informalrealities we encountered on the ground. Our respective efforts to make sense of thesepatterns were heavily influenced by the work and teaching of Guillermo ODonnell.ODonnell, who has written an afterword to this volume, is a major intellectualinspiration behind it.

We have incurred many debts in bringing this project to fruition. The volumeemerged out of two conferences on informal institutions. The first, entitled Infor-mal Institutions and Politics in the Developing World, was held at Harvard Univer-sity in April 2002. It was generously funded by the Weatherhead Center for Inter-national Affairs and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. We

viii P r e f a c e

are particularly grateful for the support of Weatherhead Center director Jorge Do-mnguez, and for the dedicated organizational work of Jeana Flahive. Our ownconceptual and theoretical ideas about informal institutions were heavily informedby this conference, and we thank participants Kathleen Collins, Keith Darden, JorgeDomnguez, Dennis Galvan, Robert Gay, Kathryn Hendley, Jim Johnson, JackKnight, Hans-Joachim Lauth, Melanie Manion, Jos Luis Medina, Mara VictoriaMurillo, Andreas Schedler, Rudra Sil, Lily Tsai, and Lucan Way.

The second conference, entitled Informal Institutions and Politics in LatinAmerica: Understanding the Rules of the Game, was held at the Kellogg Institutefor International Studies, University of Notre Dame, in April 2003. The conferencewas generously supported by the Kellogg Institute, through a grant from the CocaCola Foundation. We are particularly thankful for the support of Frances Hagopianand Scott Mainwaring, as well as Christopher Welna, Holly Rivers, and DawnDinovo, and to conference participants Rebecca Bill Chavez, Martn Bhmer, JorgeBuendia, Michael Coppedge, Jack Knight, Miriam Kornblith, Susan Stokes, IgnacioWalker, and Kurt Weyland for their insightful comments.

In addition, we have received extremely useful comments along the way fromJorge Domnguez, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Peter Hall, Goran Hyden, Lisa Mar-tin, Mara Victoria Murillo, Shannon ONeil Trowbridge, Benjamin Smith, HillelSoifer, Lucan Way, and Jason Wittenberg. Maria Koinova, Elena Plaxina, and HillelSoifer provided critical research and editorial assistance. We also thank the staff atthe Johns Hopkins University Press, and particularly Henry Tom, for their carefulassistance in bringing the book to press.

Excerpts from the Introduction are taken from Informal Institutions and Com-parative Politics: A Research Agenda, by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, inPerspectives on Politics, vol. 2, no. 4, December 2004, pp. 725740. Copyright 2004by the American Political Science Association. Reprinted with the permission ofCambridge University Press.

Finally, Steve Levitsky thanks his wife, Liz Mineo, and daughter, Alejandra SolMineo-Levitsky, for keeping him focused on the rules of the game that really matter.Gretchen Helmke thanks Mitch Sanders and her father, Stephen Helmke, for theirsupport and encouragement.

Informal Institutions and Democracy

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Introduction

g r e t c h e n h e l m k e a n d s t e v e n l e v i t s k y

Over the past two decades, a scholarly consensus has emerged around the central-ity of political institutions. In Latin America, recent research on executive-legislativerelations, electoral and party systems, judicial politics, bureaucracies, and federalismhas shed new light on how institutional design affects the stability and quality ofdemocracy. Nevertheless, persistent problems of corruption, clientelism, executive-legislative conflict, and the unrule of law cast doubt on whether an exclusive focuson parchment institutions is sufficient for understanding what drives politics inthe region (ODonnell 1996a, 1999c; Weyland 2002a). Scholars such as GuillermoODonnell and Douglass North have argued that informal institutionsor rules andprocedures that are created, communicated, and enforced outside the officiallysanctioned channelsare often as important as their formal counterparts in structur-ing the rules of the game.

Informal rules coexist with formal democratic institutions throughout LatinAmerica. In Mexico during much of the twentieth century, presidents were selectednot according to rules laid out in the constitution, the electoral law, or the statutes ofthe governing Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), but rather by means of thededazo (finger tapping), an unwritten code that gave the sitting president the rightto choose his successor, specified the candidate pool, and prohibited potential candi-dates from openly seeking the job. In Chile, notwithstanding a constitution thatcreated one of the most powerful presidencies in the world, informal power-sharingarrangements in place since democratization have induced presidents to systemati-cally underutilize that power. As a result, Chile is viewed as an exception in a re-

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gion characterized by presidential dominance (ODonnell 1994). In parts of Bolivia,Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala, where state judicial institutions are oftenabsent or ineffective, local communities solve conflict through indigenous law andother informal justice systems. And throughout Latin America, established patternsof clientelism, corruption, and patrimonialism challenge the efficacy of electionsand the rule of law (ODonnell 1996b).

Informal rules shape how democratic institutions work. They reinforce, subvert,and sometimes even supersede formal rules, procedures, and organizations. Analysesof democratic institutions that focus exclusively on formal rules thus risk miss-ing much of what shapes and constrains political behavior, which can yield anincompleteif not wholly inaccuratepicture of how politics works. Hence, it isimperative that the institutionalist turn in Latin American politics be grounded in anunderstanding of what ODonnell calls the actual rules that are being followed(1996a, 10; see also Weyland 2002a).

Taking up ODonnells call, this volume examines the relationship between in-formal institutions and democracy in Latin America. Building on a large but here-tofore disparate body of research, the book provides a conceptual and theoreticalfoundation for informal institutional analysis. The volume brings together scholarsof Latin American political institutions, from diverse theoretical and methodologicaltraditions, who converge around a simple observation: political actors respond to amix of formal and informal incentives (North 1990), and, consequently, the degree towhich formal rules actually enable and constrain politicians varies considerably.Although formal rule-based incentives predominate in many instances, they mayalso compete withand even be trumped byinformal incentives. In some cases,formal rules exist only on parchment, and actors are guided almost entirely byunwritten rules. In these cases, political behavior can be expected to deviate substan-tially from that prescribed by (or expected from) the formal rules.

The implications for institutional analysis are far-reaching. Even in areas thathave traditionally been the exclusive domain of formal institutional analysis, re-search has found that informal rules have a powerfuland, at times, systematiceffect on institutional outcomes. For example, although earlier work on presidential-ism in Latin America centered mainly on issues of formal institutional design (Linz1990; Shugart and Carey 1992; Linz and Valenzuela 1994), recent studies suggest thatthe dynamics of presidentialism cannot be fully understood in strictly constitutionalterms. Studies have shown how norms of patrimonialism produce a degree of execu-tive dominance that far exceeds that prescribed by the constitution (ODonnell 1994,1996b; Hartlyn 1998; Sandbrook and Oelbaum 1999). At the same time, other schol-ars have shown how informal institutions may limit presidential power, even in cases

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i n t r o d u c t i o n 3

of hyper-presidentialist constitutions (Peter Siavelis, this volume). Similar infor-mal institutional effects have been found in studies of legislative politics, judicialpolitics, electoral systems, party politics, political regimes, federalism, and publicadministration.

Informal institutions also shape formal institutional outcomes in a less visible, butequally important, way: by creating or strengthening incentives to comply withformal rules. In other words, they may do the enabling and constraining that weusually attribute to the formal rules. As Susan Stokes argues in this volume, formalinstitutions often work because they are embedded in implicit and informally sharedexpectations, or grammatical rules, about the particular behavior governed by theexplicit formal or game rules. For example, the effectiveness and stability of theUnited States presidential democracy is not only a product of the rules laid out inthe Constitution, but is also rooted in a set of paraconstitutional rules that pre-vent formal checks and balances from deteriorating into severe interbranch conflict(Riggs 1988). The absence of such norms of restraint and accommodation may helpexplain why similarly designed presidentialist systems have often proven more crisis-prone in Latin America.

By bringing informal institutions more centrally into the picture, this book seeksto lay a better foundation for understanding how political institutions in Latin Amer-ica work. The essays in the volume cover a diverse array of informal institutions, in-cluding the Mexican dedazo, clientelism in Brazil and Honduras, legislative ghostcoalitions in Ecuador, norms of executive-legislative power-sharing in Chile, illicitcampaign finance in Brazil, norms of electoral accountability in Argentina, indige-nous law in the Andes, norms underlying police violence in Brazilian cities, andinformal mechanisms of electoral dispute resolution (concertacesiones) in Mexico.The chapters explore how these informal rules of the game affect the quality andstability of democracy. They find myriad, complex, and often unexpected effects:whereas some informal rules compete with and subvert democratic institutions,others complement and even help sustain them.

The chapters also explore a set of conceptual, theoretical, and methodologicalquestions that are critical to advancing a research agenda on informal institutions.

In the conceptual realm, they address the question of what informal institu-tion are and, crucially, what they are not.

In the theoretical realm, the chapters explore four central questions: (1) Whatare the distinct ways in which formal and informal institutions interact?(2) What are the effects of informal institutions, particularly with respect tothe quality, performance, and stability of democracy? (3) What are the origins

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4 g r e t c h e n h e l m k e a n d s t e v e n l e v i t s k y

of informal institutions, and specifically, whyand howare they created?(4) What are the sources of informal institutional stability and change?

In the methodological realm, the chapters explore the crucial questions of howto identify, measure, and compare rules of the game that are unwritten and,in many cases, hidden from public view.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of these questions. The first sectionexamines the concept of informal institution. It makes the case for a narrow defini-tion that permits scholars to distinguish between informal institutions and otherinformal phenomena, such as weak institutions, culture, and non-rule-bound be-havior patterns. In the second section we provide an overview of how informalinstitutions affect the performance and quality of democracy in Latin America. Thethird section develops a typology of formal-informal institutional interaction. Ex-panding on the work of Hans-Joachim Lauth (2000), we distinguish among fourtypes of informal institution: complementary, accommodating, competing, and sub-stitutive. The fourth section explores a set of theoretical issues at the frontier ofresearch on informal institutions, including the critical, but underresearched, ques-tions of informal institutional emergence and change. Finally, we discuss somechallenges related to research on informal institutions, such as issues of identifica-tion, measurement, and comparison.

clarifying the concept:what is an informal institution?

This book focuses on informal political institutions, leaving aside a range ofinformal social (e.g., the handshake; the rules of dating) and economic (e.g., blackmarkets) institutions. Yet even in the narrower realm of politics, informal institutionis an ambiguous concept. The term has been applied to a broad diversity of phe-nomena, including culture, civil society, personal networks, clans and mafias, cor-ruption and clientelism, and bureaucratic and legislative norms. Such conceptualambiguity has serious analytic costs, for it limits our capacity to build and testtheories.

In this section, we attempt to clarify the concept of informal institution and todevelop a more precise and analytically useful definition. In our view, such a defini-tion should capture as much of the universe of informal rules as possible, but it mustbe narrow enough to distinguish informal rules from other, noninstitutional, infor-mal phenomena.

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i n t r o d u c t i o n 5

Formal versus Informal Institutions

We begin with a fairly standard definition of institutions as rules and proceduresthat structure social interaction by constraining and enabling actors behavior. Thisdefinition is generally thought to encompass both formal and informal rules (North1990, 34; J. Knight 1992, 2; Carey 2000,735). There is less agreement, however, onhow to distinguish between formal and informal institutions. Some scholars treatinformal institutions as synonymous with culture or tradition. For example, SvetozarPejovich defines them as traditions, customs, moral values, religious beliefs, and allother norms of behavior that have passed the test of time . . . Thus, informal institu-tions are the part of a communitys heritage that we call culture (1999, 166). Otherscholars employ a state-societal distinction, characterizing state agencies and state-enforced rules as formal institutions and the norms and organizations that constitutecivil societyincluding religious, ethnic, kinship, and civic associationsas infor-mal institutions (Boussard 2000; Manor 2001; L. Tsai 2002). A third group of scholarsdistinguishes between informal norms, which are self-enforcing, and formal rules,which are enforced by a third party, often the state (Ellickson 1991; J. Knight 1992;Calvert 1995).

In our view, each of these conceptualizations is problematic. Although someinformal institutions may be rooted in cultural tradition, many informal rules (legis-lative norms, illicit patterns of party finance) have little to do with a communityslarger values and attitudes. The state-societal distinction fails to capture the manyinformal rulesfrom organized corruption to bureaucratic norms to intragovern-mental power-sharing arrangementsthat are embedded within state institutions.

It also fails to capture what Ellickson (1991, 31) calls organization rules, or theofficial rules that govern nonstate organizations such as political parties and corpora-tions. Finally, although the self-enforcing definition is analytically useful, it fails toaccount for the fact that certain informal rules may be externally enforced (e.g., byclan and mafia bosses), in some cases by the state itself (Joy Langston, this volume).

We define informal institutions as socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that arecreated, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels. By con-trast, formal institutions are rules and procedures that are created, communicated,and enforced through channels that are widely accepted as official. A key elementof this definition, to which we return later in the chapter, is that informal institutionsmust be enforced in some fashion. In other words, actors must believe that breakingthe rules carries some form of credible sanctionbe it physical punishment, loss of

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employment, or simply social disapproval. As several of the chapters in this volumeshow, informal rules are often enforcedalbeit unofficiallyby actors and institu-tions within the state itself.

A Second Distinction: Informal Rules versus Other Informal Phenomena

Distinguishing between formal and informal institutions, however, is only halfthe conceptual task. One of the dangers of our parchment-based definition is thatinformal institution may become a residual category, or a term used to describevirtually any behavior that departs from, or is not accounted for by, the written-downrules. To avoid this pitfall, it is essential to distinguish informal institutions fromseveral other informal phenomena. In other words, we must elaborate further whatan informal institution is not.

Four distinctions are worth noting. First, informal institutions should be distin-guished from weak institutions. Many formal institutions are ineffective, in that therules that exist on paper are, in practice, widely circumvented or ignored. Yet formalinstitutional weakness does not necessarily imply the presence of informal institu-tions. It may be that no stable or binding rulesformal or informalexist. Forexample, in his seminal article on delegative democracy, ODonnell (1994) arguedthat in much of Latin America, the formal rules of representative democracy areweakly institutionalized. In the absence of institutionalized checks on executivepower, the scope of permissible presidential behavior widened considerably, whichresulted in substantial abuse of executive authority. In subsequent work, ODonnell(1996b) highlighted how particularistic informal institutions such as clientelismundermined the effectiveness of representative institutions. ODonnells work pointsto two distinct patterns of formal institutional weakness that should not be conflated.Clientelism and abuses of executive authority both depart from formal rules, butwhereas the former pattern is an informal institution, the latter is best understood asnoninstitutional behavior.

Second, informal institutions must be distinguished from other informal be-havioral regularities. Not all patterned behavior is rule-bound, or rooted in sharedexpectations about others behavior (Hart 1961, 5356; J. Knight 1992, 6672). Be-havioral regularities may be a product of a variety of other incentives. To cite anexample offered by Daniel Brinks (2003b, 4), removing ones hat in church is aninformal institution, whereas removing ones coat in a restaurant is simply a be-havioral regularity. In the latter case, leaving ones coat on may bring physicaldiscomfort, but it is not expected to trigger social disapproval or sanction. To be

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i n t r o d u c t i o n 7

considered an informal institution, a behavioral regularity must respond to an estab-lished rule or guideline, the violation of which generates some kind of externalsanction. To take another example, public graft is clearly informal behavior, but notall patterns of graft should be considered institutional. Where graft is organized andenforced from above (Waterbury 1973; Darden 2002), or where it is rooted in widelyshared expectations among citizens and public officials (and a refusal to go alongrisks incurring important costs) (Manion 1996; Della Porta and Vannucci 1999),corruption may indeed be an institution. By contrast, where graft is neither exter-nally sanctioned nor rooted in shared expectations, but rather is a response to lowpublic sector salaries and ineffective enforcement, it may be best characterized as aninformal behavior pattern.

Third, informal institutions should be distinguished from informal organizations.Although scholars often incorporate organizations into their definition of institu-tion, it is useful, following North (1990, 45), to separate the rules from theplayers. Just as formal organizations (such as political parties or unions) may bedistinguished from formal rules, informal organizations (such as clans or mafias)should be distinguished from informal institutions. Nevertheless, just as parties andother organizations are routinely studied under the broader rubric of institutional-ism, informal organizationssuch as the informal party structures analyzed byFlavia Freidenberg and Steven Levitsky in their contribution to this volumemaybe usefully incorporated into informal institutional analysis.

Finally, we return to the distinction between informal institutions and culture.Although the border at which culture ends and informal institutions begin can ad-mittedly be difficult to discern, it is essential to avoid conflating these two phe-nomena. Our approach to this problem is to cast informal institutions in narrowterms, defining them in terms of shared expectations or beliefs rather than shared val-ues. Shared expectations among a particular set of actors may or may not be rooted inbroader societal values. For example, whereas particularistic norms embedded inkinship or clan networks may be plausibly traced to broader societal values (Price1975; Dia 1996), elite power-sharing norms that emerge in deeply divided societies(e.g., Dutch consociationalism, Chiles consensus democracy) cannot. This point isclearly made in Donna Lee Van Cotts chapter on indigenous justice institutions.Although indigenous institutions are often assumed to be deeply embedded in cul-ture or tradition, Van Cott shows that this is not always the case. Whereas someindigenous institutions draw on preexisting tradition, others are recent inventionsin some cases, modeled on modern state institutionsthat cannot be traced back toearlier traditions. Not least of all, distinguishing between shared values and shared

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expectations permits us to analyze potential causal relationships between culture andinformal institutions, such as the conditions under which shared societal valuesengender, reinforce, or undermine particular informal rules.

why informal rules matter

Informal institutions merit our attention because they shape how democracyworksfor both good and ill. Perhaps not surprisingly, much of the existing literatureon informal institutions in new democracies focuses on their negative effects. Inparticular, studies have highlighted ways in which corruption, clientelism, and patri-monialism undermine the effectiveness of democratic, state, and market institu-tions. The chapters in this volume tell a more mixed story. Although several essaysprovide systematic evidence of how informal institutions erode the quality of demo-cratic institutions, others point to the ambiguous, double-edged, and even positiveeffects of informal rules. Particularly where formal state and regime institutions areweak, ineffective, or insufficiently democratic, informal rules may enhance theperformance and stability of democracy. In this section we examine the effects ofinformal institutions in four key areas of democratic politics: representation, ac-countability, governability, and citizenship and the rule of law.

Political Representation

Several of the essays in this volume grapple with issues of political representation.Evidence of a growing gap between citizens and politicians in Latin America isabundant: it includes declining party identification and voter turnout (Hagopian1998, 11421), high levels of electoral volatility (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Robertsand Wibbels 1999), the rise of personalistic or neopopulist outsiders (Roberts 1995;Weyland 1996, 1999), and, in a few countries, large-scale protest against the entirepolitical elite. Scholars have linked this representation gap to informal institutionssuch as clientelism, patrimonialism, and corruption (Fox 1994; ODonnell 1996b;Mainwaring 1999; Brusco et al. 2004). These particularistic institutions are thus saidto erode or prevent the establishment of programmatic linkages between parties andcitizens.

The chapters in this volume find new evidence in support of these claims. Forexample, in his comparative analysis of state-level legislative politics in Brazil, ScottDesposato finds that clientelism erodes legislative parties capacity to represent vot-ers on programmatic issues. In the highly clientelistic state of Piau, he finds thatparty discipline is low, individual legislators rarely take public positions on issues,

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i n t r o d u c t i o n 9

and opposition parties are frequently co-opted by governors. By contrast, in SoPaulo, where clientelism is less pervasive, Desposato discovers the same parties to bemore cohesive, more willing to take public positions on programmatic issues, andless vulnerable to co-optation. The chapters by Freidenberg and Levitsky, AndrsMeja Acosta, and David Samuels also suggest that informaland especially particu-laristicrules erode the quality of programmatic representation.

Yet the effects of informal institutions on representation are not uniformly nega-tive. Where formal mechanisms of representation are weak or ineffective, informalinstitutionseven particularistic onesmay yield some positive benefits in terms ofrepresentation. In her chapter on clientelism and pork-barrel politics in Honduras,Michelle Taylor-Robinson argues that due to Hondurass closed-list proportionalrepresentation system, the electoral incentives for legislators to represent local inter-ests are weak. She finds that elected representatives from poor rural areas whosponsor locally targeted (usually pork-barrel) legislation do so mainly in response toestablished norms of clientelism. In the absence of such norms, the legislativeprocess might have ignored poor rural localities entirely.

Democratic Accountability

Recent evidence from Latin America suggests that democratic elections are ofteninsufficient mechanisms for ensuring government accountability and responsive-ness. Using ODonnells terms (1994), accountability has been found wanting in twokey areas: vertical accountability, or the degree to which citizens are able to reward orpunish officials for their performance in office (ODonnell 1994; Stokes 2001), andhorizontal accountability, or the degree to which public officials are responsible to(or checked by) other agencies and institutions of the state (ODonnell 1994, 1999b;Schedler et al. 1999; Mainwaring and Welna 2003). In much of the region, citizensand their representatives are said to lack effective mechanisms to oversee and, whennecessary, punish officeholders who abuse power. As a result, elected officials rou-tinely betray their mandates, abuse their authority, and ignore constituents demands.

Here, too, informal institutions are widely viewed as obstacles to normativelydesirable outcomes, and for good reason. Because they are unwritten and unregu-lated, informal rules generally lack the transparency or public oversight that is oftenessential to accountability. It is difficult to use the law or public agencies to hold apolitician accountable for breaking rules thatby definitionare not on the books.Several chapters in this volume explore the link between the nontransparent natureof informal institutions and deficits of accountability. For example, in their essay oninformal party organization, Freidenberg and Levitsky argue that informal finance,

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decision-making, and other intraparty processes widen the gap between partiespublic faces and their real power structures, which limits the capacity of activistsand voters to hold party leaders accountable. In line with this analysis, Langstonargues in her chapter that PRI elites preferred to govern through informal institu-tions such as the dedazo (rather than create formal authoritarian rules) in partbecause they helped prevent local party activists from holding them accountable.Had the dedazo system been written into PRI statutes or the constitution, it wouldhave been open to public scrutinyand thus more vulnerable to public challenge.

Informal institutions need not always undermine accountability, however. AsStokess chapter shows, informal norms may also reinforce or sustain formal institu-tions of accountability. For elections to function effectively as mechanisms of verti-cal accountability, Stokes argues, certain shared expectations about how citizens willevaluate politicians are essential. Only when it is widely believed that citizens willfollow an informal decision rule to vote retrospectively, weighing a politicians pastperformance in deciding how to vote (as opposed to, say, exchanging their votes forparticularistic favors), will politicians act responsively and citizens expect such re-sponsiveness. Drawing on a comparison of cities and provinces in Argentina, Stokesfinds that democratic institutions work better where such shared expectations exist(Mar del Plata) than where they do not (Misiones).

Of course, informal institutions may also ensure accountability in less appealingways. As Samuels shows in his analysis of campaign finance in Brazil, particularisticrelationships are critical to sustaining illicit campaign finance contracts, for theyhelp overcome the credible commitment problems inherent in illegal transactions.By providing trust, familiarity, reputations, and repeated interaction, particularisticnorms help business leaders and politicians hold each other accountable in a con-text in which no legal recourse is available. Hence, they serve as the glue thatsustains informal campaign finance contracts. Todd Eisenstadts chapter on infor-mal mechanisms of postelectoral conflict resolution (concertacesiones) also finds anambiguous effect with respect to accountability. On the one hand, negotiated agree-ments between Mexicos ruling PRI and the opposition National Action Party (PAN)brought a degree of vertical accountability in that they removed from power rulingparty candidates who had won elections through fraud. On the other hand, choosingmayors and governors though backroom bargaining completely severed the (how-ever fictitious) link between the voting process and electoral outcomes, which canhardly be said to enhance vertical accountability.

Taken together, these chapters thus show that informal rules may provide thebases for credible commitment and some degree of accountability. However, asSamuels points out, they are less likely to provide the right kind of credible

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commitments (i.e., those that enhance public accountability) needed for demo-cratic consolidation.

Democratic Governance

A third set of problems facing contemporary Latin American democracies lies inthe area of democratic governance (Domnguez and Shifter 2003). Notwithstandingthe virtual absence of military coups since 1980, the region has experienced wide-spread and often severe problems of executive-legislative conflict. In many coun-tries, the result has been policy failure, periods of governmental paralysis, severeinstitutional crises (including executive efforts to circumvent and close congress,and extra-constitutional efforts to remove presidents), and, in extreme cases, demo-cratic breakdown.

Democratic governance is an area in which informal institutions are frequentlyseen to have a positive effect. For example, studies have shown that key featuresof presidential systems, particularly when combined with multiparty or fragmentedparty systems, increase the likelihood of governability crises rooted in executive-legislative conflict. In some cases, however, informal norms of accommodation,power-sharing, and coalition building have helped prevent many of the problemsassociated with multiparty presidentialism. Nowhere is this clearer than in post-Pinochet Chile. In his chapter, Siavelis shows how informal power-sharing arrange-ments ensured smooth executive-legislative relations in a context of Chiles multi-party system and hyper-presidentialist constitution. Similarly, John Carey andSiavelis show how the practice of electoral insurance helped maintain the cohe-sion of the governing Concertacin coalition despite an electoral system that is ill-suited to multiparty coalitions. Informal institutions also contributed to democraticgovernance in Ecuador. As Meja Acostas chapter argues, Ecuadors fragmentedparty system (which virtually ensures that presidents will lack legislative majorities)made it a least likely case for successful economic reform under democracy.Yet Ecuadorian presidents managed to push substantial economic reforms throughthe legislature during the 1990s. Meja Acosta attributes this legislative success toinformal ghost coalitions, sustained by widely known and accepted practices oflegislative vote-buying. In both the Chilean and Ecuadorian cases, however, theauthors note that informal institutions of power-sharing have a double-edged ef-fect: governability is achieved through means that reduce transparency and publicaccountability.

Informal institutions may also enhance governability in authoritarian regimes, asthe two chapters on Mexico demonstrate. Langstons chapter shows how the dedazo

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served as the basis for one of the few institutionalized nondemocratic mechanisms ofsuccession in the modern world. Similarly, Eisenstadts essay suggests that the PRIsuse of concertacesiones may have helped prevent large-scale political conflict duringthe 1990s. Although these informal mechanisms of governability probably slowedMexicos democratic transition, they may also have contributed to the relative sta-bility of that transition.

Citizenship and the Rule of Law

Finally, scholars of Latin American democracies have called attention to seriousdeficiencies in the area of citizenship rights. Notwithstanding the enshrinement of avariety of civil and human rights in democratic constitutions, many Latin Americanstates have failed to consistently uphold or enforce the rule of law and, as a result,many citizens, particularly poor citizens and members of ethnic or racial minorities,do not possess these rights in practice (ODonnell 1993, 1999c; Holston and Caldeira1998; Mndez et al. 1999; Yashar 1999). The result, in many countries, is whatODonnell has called brown areas: territories characterized by low-intensity citi-zenship and the unrule of law (1993, 1999c).

The chapters in this volume suggest that informal institutions both violate andadvance citizenship rights in such brown areas. Daniel Brinkss chapter on policeviolence is a clear example of the former. Brinks shows that in major Brazilian cities,a set of norms exists within the justice system that not only permits but encouragesextrajudicial executions of suspected violent criminals. It is widely known and ac-cepted that those who kill suspected violent criminals will be protected from prose-cution and perhaps even rewarded with a promotion or bonus. Hence, the extraor-dinarily high levels of extrajudicial killing by police in Brazils major cities are notsimply a product of sheer lawlessness, but rather are reinforced by a complex systemof informal rules and incentives within the Brazilian state. However, as Van Cottscontribution shows, informal institutions may help protect citizenship rights wherethe state fails to do so. For example, in parts of the Andes in which state legalinstitutions either do not exist or are widely viewed as corrupt or ineffective, informalsystems of justice such as indigenous law, rondas campesinas (community patrols;Peru) and juntas vecinales (neighborhood juntas; Bolivia) have been used to resolvedisputes, provide security, and dispense justice. Where they are effective, informaljustice systems may offer some partial remedies for low-intensity citizenship.

In sum, these chapters provide new evidence of how informal rules of the gamemay undermine the quality and performance of new democracies. However, theyalso point to ways in which informal institutions may strengthen or enhance the

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quality of democracy. These institutions seem to be particularly important whereformal institutions are ineffective or insufficiently democratic. Such performance-enhancing effects of informal institutions have been underexamined in recent stud-ies of Latin American democracies.

a typology of informal institutions

As the previous section makes clear, formal and informal institutions interact indiverse ways, with diverse consequences. To make sense of these various patterns, inthis section we develop a typology of formal-informal institutional relationships. Thetypology is based on two dimensions. The first is the degree of convergence be-tween formal and informal institutional outcomes. The distinction here is whetherfollowing the informal rules produces a result substantively similar to or differentfrom that expected from a strict and exclusive adherence to the formal rules. Wherefollowing the informal rule leads to a substantively different outcome, formal andinformal institutions may be said to diverge. Where the two outcomes are not sub-stantively different, formal and informal institutions converge. The second dimen-sion is that of the effectiveness of the relevant formal institutions. By effectiveness wemean the extent to which rules and procedures that exist on paper are enforced orcomplied with in practice. Where formal institutions are effective, actors believethere is a high probability that noncompliance will be sanctioned by official authori-ties. Where formal rules and procedures are ineffective, actors believe the proba-bility of enforcement (and hence the expected cost of violation) to be low. These twodimensions produce the fourfold typology shown in figure I.1.

Complementary Informal Institutions. The left side of the figure correspondsto informal institutions that coexist with effective formal institutions, such that ac-tors expect the rules that exist on paper to be enforced. The upper left cell com-bines effective formal rules and convergent outcomes, producing what Lauth (2000,25) calls complementary informal institutions. Complementary informal institutionsshape behavior in ways that neither violate the overarching formal rules nor producesubstantively different outcomes. Often, they are seen to enhance the efficiency oreffectiveness of formal institutions.

Complementary informal institutions may be broken down into two types. Onetype simply fills in gaps within formal institutions, either by addressing contingen-cies that are not dealt with in the formal rules or by helping actors pursue their goalsmore effectively within a given formal institutional framework. Like many of theinformal norms, routines, and operating procedures that pervade bureaucracies,

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Outcomes/

Effectiveness

Efffective Formal

Institutions

Ineffective Formal

Institutions

Convergent Complementary Substitutive

Divergent Accommodating Competing

Figure I.1. A Typology of Informal Institutions

legislatures, and other complex organizations, such informal institutions facilitatecoordination and ease decision-making. A clear example of this type is the systemof electoral insurance developed by Chiles democratic Concertacin in responseto the countrys distinctive M=2 (two-member district) electoral system (Carey andSiavelis, this volume). Because two legislators are elected per district, parties orcoalitions must double the vote of their nearest competitor to capture both seats,which requires that they run two strong candidates. Because a doubling outcomeis highly uncertain, however, politicians are often reluctant to share a ticket withanother high-quality candidate. Electoral insurance helped resolve this problem byassuring strong but unsuccessful candidates that they would be compensated with agovernment appointment. By reducing the risk of joining a strong ticket, this normenhanced both the Concertacins competitiveness and its cohesion.

The second type of complementary informal institution serves as the underlyingfoundation for formal institutions. These informal norms create incentives to complywith formal rules that might otherwise exist merely as pieces of parchment. Thus,compliance with formal rules is rooted not in the formal rules per se, but rather inshared expectations created by underlying (and often preexisting) informal norms.For example, the success of the U.S. Constitution has been attributed not only toinstitutional design but also to reinforcement by a complementary set of sharedbeliefs and expectations among citizens (e.g., North et al. 2000). Likewise, Stokes(this volume) posits that elections serve as an effective mechanism of democraticaccountability only where voters and politicians believe that citizens will weighpoliticians past behavior when casting their votes. Where such a shared expectationexists, as in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata, elections will induce politicians to beaccountable to voters, and citizens will be more likely to find governments promisescredible. Where it is absent, as in many other parts of Argentina, elections are unlikelyto bring the kind of governmental responsiveness that they were designed to ensure.

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Accommodating Informal Institutions. The lower left cell of figure I.1, which com-bines effective formal institutions and divergent outcomes, corresponds to what wecall accommodating informal institutions. These informal institutions create incen-tives to behave in ways that alter the substantive effects of formal rules, but withoutdirectly violating them. In other words, they contradict the spirit, but not the letter, ofthe formal rules. Accommodating informal institutions are often created by actorswho dislike outcomes generated by the formal rules but are unable to change oropenly violate those rules. As such, these institutions often help reconcile theseactors interests with the existing formal institutional arrangements. A classic exam-ple is Dutch consociationalism, a set of informal, unwritten rules of cross-partyaccommodation and power-sharing that included extensive consultation in policy-making, mutual vetoes, and a proportional distribution of government jobs (Lijphart1975, 12238). Although consociational arrangements violated the democratic spiritof the Dutch constitution by limiting the power of the vote, they enhanced regimestability by dampening class and religious conflict (Lijphart 1975, 13738).

Siaveliss contribution to this volume offers another example of an accommodat-ing informal institution. According to Siavelis, the 1980 Chilean constitution wasamong the least conducive to effective democracy in Latin America. A powerfulpresidency and majoritarian electoral rules create disincentives for cooperation,coalition formation and political accommodation, which threatened the quality, ifnot the stability, of Chiles post-1989 democracy. Lacking the political strength toabolish or reform the Pinochet-era constitution, elites within the governing demo-cratic Concertacin developed a set of informal procedures that counteracted itseffects. Informal mechanisms such as the cuoteo, partido transversal, and demo-cracia de los acuerdos created incentives for interparty and interbranch cooperationand consultation, which mitigated the most negative characteristics of exaggeratedpresidentialism.

Competing Informal Institutions. To the right side of figure I.1 are instances ofinformal institutions that coexist with ineffective formal institutions. The lower rightcell combines ineffective formal rules and divergent outcomes, producing compet-ing informal institutions. These informal institutions structure incentives in waysthat are incompatible with the formal rules: to follow one rule, actors must violateanother. Competing informal institutions trump their formal counterparts, generat-ing outcomes that diverge markedly from what is expected from the formal rules. Anexample is systemic corruption. In postwar Italy, norms of corruption were morepowerful than the laws of the state: the latter could be violated with impunity, whileanyone who challenged the conventions of the illicit market would meet with cer-

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tain punishment (Della Porta and Vannucci 1999, 15). Similarly, particularisticnorms such as clientelism and patrimonialism are often said to subvert formal state,market, and electoral institutions (ODonnell 1996b; Borozc 2000; Lauth 2000).

Brinkss chapter on police violence offers an example of a competing informalinstitution. Although Brazilian law prohibits police officers from killing suspectedviolent criminals, it is routinely trumped by norms (within the law enforcementcommunity itself ) that encourage extrajudicial killing and protect those who engagein it. Van Cotts chapter on informal systems of justice administration in the Andesoffers additional examples. State law prohibits some acts (e.g., marital violence,marriage of minors) that are permitted by indigenous law, and some transgressions inindigenous law, such as gossip and religious dissent, are not crimes according to statelaw. In these latter cases, community efforts to punish transgressors clearly infringeupon individuals constitutionally enshrined rights.

Substitutive Informal Institutions. Finally, the upper right cell of figure I-1, whichcombines ineffective formal institutions and compatible outcomes, corresponds tosubstitutive informal institutions. Like complementary institutions, substitutiveinformal institutions are employed by actors who seek outcomes compatible withformal rules and procedures. Like competing institutions, however, they exist inenvironments where the formal rules are not routinely enforced. Hence, substitutiveinformal institutions achieve what formal institutions were designed, but failed,to achieve.

Substitutive institutions generally emerge where state structures are weak orineffective. For example, as Eisenstadts chapter shows, Mexicos formal institutionsof electoral dispute resolutionsuch as the electoral courtslacked credibility andwere frequently bypassed during that countrys protracted democratic transition. Inthis context, concertacesiones, or gentlemans agreements, thus served as a waystation for government and opposition elites until formal institutions of electoraldispute resolution became credible. Similarly, in rural northern Peru, where stateweakness resulted in inadequate police protection and ineffective courts during thelate 1970s, citizens created informal rondas campesinas to defend their communitiesand ronda assemblies (informal courts) to resolve local disputes (Starn 1999, 4971,10632; Van Cott, this volume). These informal structures served a state-like func-tion, dispensing community-level justice in areas in which the state had virtuallydisappeared (Van Cott, this volume).

A few final points regarding this typology merit mention. First, whereas much ofthe political science literature casts informal institutions as either entirely functional

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(i.e., providing solutions to problems of social interaction and coordination) orwholly dysfunctional (i.e., particularistic norms such as clientelism, corruption, andpatrimonialism), the typology helps capture more complex and double-edged rela-tionships between formal and informal rules. Thus, although substitutive informalinstitutions such as concertacesiones and rondas campesinas lead actors to bypassformal rules and procedures, they may also help achieve results (resolution of post-electoral conflict, public security) that the formal rules failed to achieve. And al-though accommodating informal institutions such as power-sharing norms violatethe spirit of the formal rules, they may generate outcomes (democratic stability) thatare viewed as broadly beneficial.

Second, as many of the essays in this volume demonstrate, categorizations ofinformal institutions are not always mutually exclusive. Indeed, as Brinks points outin his chapter, informal rules may fall into different categories in relation to differentformal institutions. For example, mafias directly violate certain state laws, but theymay also substitute for ineffective state agencies that fail to deliver public goods.

Similarly, clientelism may violate liberal democratic procedure (ODonnell 1996b,40), but as Taylor-Robinson (this volume) notes, it may also substitute for weakformal mechanisms of local representation. This point is made particularly mani-fest in Van Cotts chapter, which shows how indigenous laws may fall into all four ofour categories.

Third, formal-informal institutional relationships are dynamic (Farrell and Hri-tier 2002; K. Tsai 2003; Galvan 2004). Informal institutions often serve as catalysts forformal institutional change. For example, formal rules may be created to entrenchinformal norms that actors find beneficial, as when the twenty-second amendmentto the U.S. Constitution formalized the norm of a two-term presidency. Alterna-tively, formal rules may be modified to close loopholes exploited through infor-mal institutions (Farrell and Hritier 2002, 6), as when Argentine President CarlosMenems extensive use of pseudo-constitutional executive decree authority led poli-ticians to formalize (and regulate) such decree authority in the 1994 constitution(Ferreira Rubio and Goretti 1998, 5657). Informal institutions may also lead toformal institutional collapse. By drawing public attention to the ineffectiveness offormal rules, for example, competing informal institutions may trigger efforts todismantle them.

Yet informal institutions may also contribute to formal institutional stability. Byenhancing the performance of formal institutions or increasing the benefits gainedby working within them, complementary informal institutions may strengthen ac-tors commitment to the formal rules. Along similar lines, accommodating informalinstitutions may dampen pressure for formal institutional change by blunting the

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negative effects of formal institutions. This dynamic can be seen in Chile (Siavelis,this volume), where informal power-sharing arrangements helped attenuate theeffects of the Pinochet-era constitution, which in turn softened opposition to itwithin the democratic Concertacin. In such cases, the collapse of previously exist-ing informal rules may trigger pressure for formal institutional change. For example,Carey and Siavelis suggest in their chapter that the collapse of electoral insurancemay generate pressure to modify Chiles electoral system.

Finally, informal institutions may have a crowding out effect on formal insti-tutions. Thus, substitutive informal institutions may inhibit the development ofeffective formal institutions by dampening demands for the service provided by theformal structure and encouraging actors to invest in (and thus gain a vested interestin the preservation of ) the informal rules of the game. For example, citizen invest-ments of time, energy, and resources into informal justice systems in Andean com-munities may contribute to the further neglect of (already weak) state-backed legalsystems.

This typology provides a useful starting point for categorizing the interactionbetween formal and informal institutions. However, at least two alternative types ofdistinctions among informal institutions deserve mention. One is based on theorigins of informal institutions relative to formal ones. Some informal institutionsemerge endogenously from formal institutional arrangements, in that their originsare directly related to particular formal rules. As we elaborate in the next section,actors create formal rules in an effort to subvert, mitigate the effects of, substitute for,or enhance the efficiency of formal institutions. Examples include many legislative,judicial, and bureaucratic norms. Other informal institutions develop independentof formal institutional structures, in response to conditions that are largely unrelatedto (and, in many cases, pre-date) the formal institutional context. Many indigenousor customary laws fall into this latter category (Galvan 2004; Van Cott, this volume).

A second distinction, also discussed below, revolves around how informal institu-tions emerge. Some informal institutions are created in a top-down fashion by asmall number of elites. Among the informal institutions discussed in this volume,the dedazo, as described by Langston, and the legislative and cross-party power-sharing norms described by Carey and Siavelis, Siavelis, and Meja Acosta fall intothis category. Other informal institutions emerge in a decentralized, bottom-upmanner that involves a much larger number of societal actors. Clientelism (Des-posato, Taylor-Robinson), many indigenous laws (Van Cott), and norms of policeviolence (Brinks) fit this pattern. Whereas the dynamics of top-down or elite-createdinformal institutions are in many ways similar to those of formal institutions, bottom-

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up, societal informal institutions are often seen as linked to broader societal valuesor cultural patterns.

theoretical frontiers: issues of emergence andchange in informal institutions

At the cutting edge of research on formal institutions lie questions of institutionalemergence, stability, and change. To date, the comparative politics literature oninformal institutions has largely neglected these issues. Studies of phenomena suchas clientelism, patrimonialism, clan politics, and indigenous or custom law oftentake those institutions as historically given, treating them as part of a static culturallandscape, but without specifying the mechanisms by which they are sustained.Other studies treat informal institutions in purely functionalist terms, explainingtheir emergence solely in terms of their purported effects (e.g., the efficiency gainsthey yield). The chapters in this volume pose challenges to both static and func-tionalist accounts, examining the particular mechanisms underlying why and howinformal institutions are created, as well as the sources of informal institutionalstability and change.

Origins of Informal Institutions

By definition, the creation of informal institutions differs markedly from formalrule-making processes. Whereas formal rules are created through official channels(such as executives and legislatures) and communicated and enforced by state agen-cies (such as the police and courts), informal rules are created, communicated, and(usually) enforced outside public channels. They are rarely publicly debated orwritten down, and the actors who create and enforce them may deny doing so.Hence, their origins are often murky and disputed. Why and how, then, do infor-mal institutions emerge?

Building on the previous section, we can identify four reasons for informal in-stitutions to emerge. One is the incompleteness of formal institutions. Formalrules set general parameters for behavior, but they cannot cover all possible con-tingencies or provide guidelines for what to do in all circumstances. Consequently,actors operating within a particular formal institutional context develop norms andprocedures that expedite their work or address problems not contemplated by theformal rules. Thus, ambiguities in the formal rules governing relations between theEuropean Parliament and the European Council gave rise to a variety of informal

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institutionssuch as trialoguesthat facilitated the codecision process within theEuropean Union (Farrell and Hritier 2002). Likewise, ambiguities in the statutesgoverning the U.S. Federal Reserve gave rise to the 1951 Accord, an informalagreement that specified the nature of the Feds responsibilities toward the TreasuryDepartment (Keech 1995, 190, 200201).

Second, actors may also create informal institutions because they lack the powerto carry out formal institutional change, or because they deem such change to be toocostly (Mershon 1994, 5051). In these cases, informal rule creation can be seen as asecond-best strategy for actors who are unable to achieve certain goals throughformal institutions. This is the logic suggested by the two chapters on post-PinochetChile. Concertacin leaders created electoral insurance and other power-sharingarrangements as means of adapting to a constitution and electoral system that theydisliked butdue to the power of the military and the rightcould not change.

A third source of creation of informal institutions is formal institutional weakness,or the fact that formal rules lack credibility or are not enforced. Thus, Mexicanopposition leaders participated in concertacesiones because they did not view theformal electoral courts as credible or fair (Eisenstadt, this volume), and Peruvianvillagers created rondas campesinas because the state judicial system failed to upholdthe rule of law (Van Cott, this volume). In these cases, then, actors do not developinformal institutions in order to weaken their formal counterparts: actors turn tothem because formal institutions are already weak.

Finally, actors may create informal rules to pursue publicly (or internationally)unacceptable goals. Because they are relatively inconspicuous, informal institutionsallow actors to pursue activitiesranging from the unpopular to the illegalthatcannot stand a test of public scrutiny. For example, as Samuels argues in hischapter, the explicit exchange of money for political influence is not publicly ac-ceptable in any democracy in the world. Unable to turn to the law to enforcecampaign finance contracts, then, Brazilian politicians and firms routinely turn toinformal institutions. Similarly, although norms permitting the killing of suspectedviolent criminals by police seem to enjoy substantial public support in Brazil, theygrossly violate prevailing domestic and international human rights standards andthus cannot be legalized. Along similar lines, Langston suggests that one of thereasons why PRI leaders never formalized the rules of the dedazo was that suchopenly authoritarian practices were more likely to meet with public and inter-national disapproval.

Identifying the incentives that actors face to create informal institutions, however,is not sufficient to explain how they are established. Incompleteness cannot ex-plain how the need for additional rules translates into their creation. Where informal

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institutions are a second-best strategy, it remains to be explained why actors who lackthe capacity to change the formal rules are nevertheless able to establish and enforceinformal ones. And where actors share certain illicit goals, it must be explainedhow they are able to agree on informal norms that enable them to circumvent theformal rules.

Along these lines, several of the volumes chapters explore the creation of infor-mal institutions through the lens of coordination. Because coordination often takesplace in a context in which power and resources are unevenly distributed, informalinstitutions are cast as the culmination of a bargaining process in which actors seek tomaximize their benefits, given their beliefs about the strategies available to otheractors (J. Knight 1992). This is the gist of the arguments in the chapters by Langston,Eisenstadt, Meja Acosta, and Samuels.

Alternatively, the emergence of informal institutions may be explained as a histor-ically contingent, and ultimately path-dependent, process. In these cases, informalrules are less a product of actor design than the (often unintended) consequence of aparticular historical experience that creates certain socially shared expectations.

For example, as Stokes suggests in her chapter, norms of democratic accountabilitymay emerge out of an early felicitous experience with good government, which setsin motion a virtuous cycle in which citizens believe that politicians can be heldaccountable and, because of this, politicians are willing to act more responsibly.

Explaining how informal rules emerge and persist also requires specifying howthey are communicated to the relevant actors. Two mechanisms of the transmissionand enforcement of informal rules emerge out of the chapters. One is personalnetworks, often operating through organizations such as political parties. Thus,political parties played an important role in diffusing rondas campesinas in Peru(Starn 1999, 11617; Van Cott, this volume) and concertacesiones in Mexico (Eisen-stadt, this volume), and in consolidating electoral clientelism in Honduras (Taylor-Robinson, this volume).

Informal rules may also be communicated through highly visible (if infrequent)episodes of rule-breaking and sanction. Widely observed efforts to punish deviationsfrom informal rules can effectively signal the costs of noncompliance. For example,as Langstons chapter shows, the Mexican dedazo was institutionalized during the1940s and 1950s through a process of learning by example. PRI leaders who defiedthe incumbent presidents right to choose his successor suffered political marginali-zation, while those who played by the rules were rewarded with better posts. Like-wise, in his chapter Brinks suggests that the murder of investigators into (or witnessesof ) police crime communicated the norms of police impunity, effectively discourag-ing others from taking such actions.

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Informal Institutional Change

Informal institutions are often portrayed as highly resistant to change. Like cul-ture, they often are assumed to possess a tenacious survival ability (North 1990, 45),which allows them to endure regardless of the formal institutional context. Whenchange occurs, it is expected to be slow and incremental (North 1990, 45; Lauth2000, 2425). Lauth, for example, argues that because informal rules do not possessa center which directs and co-ordinates their actions, informal institutional changeis bound to be an extremely lengthy process (2000, 2425). The chapters in thisvolume, however, suggest that informal institutional changeboth in highly cen-tralized and in decentralized instancesmay be more frequent than we often as-sume. As Langstons and Eisenstadts chapters on Mexico make clear, informalinstitutions can collapse quite quickly. And, as Van Cott argues in her essay, manyindigenous institutions that are widely assumed to be long established as unchang-ing have in fact been repeatedly transformedand even reinventedover time.

One possible explanation for variation in the stability of informal institutions liesin the type of institution being examined. For example, top-down or elite-createdinformal institutions, which are usually a product of strategic interaction among arelatively small number of actors, may be more susceptible to change than bottom-up, society-wide informal institutions, which emerge in a more decentralized (andless conscious) manner through repeated interaction. Because coordination isoften harder to achieve in larger groups, once an informal norm is in place, reorient-ing expectations around a new set of rules may prove more difficult. This may betoo neat a dichotomy, however. Under certain conditions, even deeply rooted anddecentralized societal norms may change relatively quickly (e.g., foot-binding inChina; see Mackie 1996). Moreover, community size can cut both ways. As J. Knight(1992) points out, informal institutions may actually be less stable in larger commu-nities, given higher relative costs of sanctioning and increased opportunities for thedevelopment of multiple interpretations of the norm.

There is a clear need, then, for greater attention to the questions of why and howinformal rules change. Explorations into informal institutional change will almostcertainly force scholars to think more seriously about their foundation. Identifyingpotential sources of change in informal institutions is, in effect, the flip side of specify-ing the mechanisms of institutions reproduction or stability (cf. Thelen 1999, 399).

This volumes essays consider three sources of informal institutional change:(1) formal institutional change, (2) changes in the underlying distribution of powerand resources, and (3) changes in shared beliefs and collective experiences.

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Formal Institutional Change. Because many informal rules are endogenous toformal institutional structures (in that they emerge in response to incentives createdby those institutions), formal institutions often serve as a catalyst for informal institu-tional change. This impact should not, of course, be overstated: informal institutionshave often proven resilient even in the face of large-scale legal or administrativereform. Nevertheless, when changes in the formal rules affect the relative costs andbenefits of playing by informal rules, they may have an important effect on thestability of informal institutions.

In evaluating how formal rules affect informal institutional stability and change,it is useful to disaggregate formal institutional change into two types. The first is achange in formal institutional design. Particularly in the case of complementary andaccommodating informal institutions, formal rule changes may alter the nature ofproblems that the informal institution had addressed, thereby creating incentives foractors to modify or abandon the informal rule. For example, the elimination ofChiles M=2 electoral system would almost certainly undercut the informal institu-tion of electoral insurance. Or in Ecuador, electoral reforms that reduced the num-ber of political parties would potentially eliminate the need for ghost coalitions,while institutional reforms that limited the executives discretion in making politicalappointments would undermine a presidents capacity to sustain them.

Informal institutional change may also be driven by a change in formal institu-tional strength or effectiveness. For example, changes in the level of enforcement offormal rules may alter the costs and benefits adhering to informal institutions thatcompete with or substitute for those rules. Compliance with competing informalinstitutions becomes more costly as enforcement of the formal rules increases, and,at some point, these costs will lead actors to abandon the informal rules. Thus, theincreased judicial enforcement triggered by the Mani Pulite investigations under-mined some forms of corruption in Italy (Della Porta and Vannucci 1999, 26569),and federal enforcement of civil rights legislation weakened Jim Crow institutions inthe U.S. South. Or, to take an example from this volume, reforms to Salvadors(Brazil) juvenile justice system that enhanced enforcement in the area of childhomicides seem to have weakened informal norms encouraging killing of childrenby police (Brinks, this volume).

Increased effectiveness of formal institutions may also weaken substitutive infor-mal institutions. When the credibility of previously ineffective formal structures isenhanced, the benefits associated with the use of substitutive institutions may dimin-ish, potentially to the point of their dispensability. For example, the increased credi-bility of Mexicos electoral courts over the course of the 1990s reduced the incentiveof opposition leaders to work through informal concertacesiones (Eisenstadt, this

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volume), and the increased effectiveness of Perus public security and judicial sys-tems led to the eventual collapse of many rondas campesinas (Starn 1999, 26568;Van Cott, this volume).

The destruction of informal institutions does not always result in a stable newformal institutional equilibrium, however. It may also lead to chaos. In Guatemala,for example, state attempts to impose national legal institutions in rural Mayancommunities during the 1970s and 1980s disrupted preexisting patterns of customarylaw, but the failure to consolidate a new legal system left rural residents uncertainover which laws and authorities prevailed (Handy 2004, 55560). As a result, muchof Guatemala was essentially left lawless, leading to a sharp increase in violence andvigilantism (Handy 2004, 55860; see also Galvan 2004).

Change in the Distribution of Power and Resources. Formal institutions are notthe only impetus for informal institutional change. An alternative source of changeis an alteration of the status quo conditions that had previously sustained the institu-tion (J. Knight 1992; see also Greif and Laitin 2004). Developments in the externalenvironment may change the distribution of power and resources among actors,weakening those who benefit from a particular informal institution and strengthen-ing those who seek to change it. This dynamic can be seen in Langstons analysis ofthe collapse of the dedazo. Mexicos increasingly competitive electoral environmentduring the 1990s strengthened local PRI leaders and activists vis--vis the nationalleadership, which allowed them to contest and eventually dismantle the dedazosystem. In this case, the relative pay-offs to PRI politicians were transformed by theleaderships growing inability to credibly threaten those members who challengedthe presidents prerogatives. Similarly, Eisenstadt argues that the shift in the balanceof power created by the PANs capture of the presidency in 2000 put an abrupt end toconcertacesiones. Informal postelection bargaining tables had always been a second-best strategy for PAN leaders, and when the power asymmetries created by the PRIscontrol of the presidency disappeared, the PAN was free to abandon them. Finally,Carey and Siavelis argue that the viability of the Concertacins electoral insur-ance hinges on the continued electoral success of the coalition. Were the Concerta-cin to lose the presidency, it would lose its capacity to reward unsuccessful legisla-tive candidates.

Changes in Shared Beliefs and Experiences. A third source of informal institu-tional change lies in actors beliefs about the opportunities and threats they face. Ifactors shared expectations about the costs or benefits of an informal rule shouldchange (due to a particular event or collective experience, a gradual accumulationof experiences, or the existence of a mechanism through which to coordinate ex-

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pectations), then informal institutionseven long-established onesmay changequickly. As Gerry Mackie (1996) argues in the case of foot-binding in China, themove to end the centuries-old practice hinged on convincing a critical mass ofpeople of the existence of an alternative marriage market that allowed sons to marrydaughters with natural feet. Along similar lines, Siavelis (this volume) argues that ashared perception of the threat of a coup helped ensure adherence to informalnorms of interbranch cooperation in post-Pinochet Chile. As this perceived threatfades, Siavelis argues, actors willingness to sustain those norms may erode. Finally,Stokess suggestion that positive experiences with democratic government create andreinforce norms of accountability suggests that the conversefor example, a par-ticularly corrupt or abusive governmentmay contribute to their breakdown.

research challenges: issues of identification,measurement, and comparison

Research on informal institutions confronts a set of practical challenges that arequite distinct from those of formal institutional analysis. One challenge lies in simplyidentifying the existence of an informal institution. If a rule is unwritten, just how dowe demonstrate that it exists? Because formal rules are usually written down and offi-cially communicated and sanctioned, their identification and measurement oftenrequires little more than a glance at a countrys constitution or electoral law. Identify-ing informal institutions is different. Whereas a constitution tells us whether a coun-try has a presidential or parliamentary system of government, it tells us little aboutthe pervasiveness of clientelism, patrimonialism, or power-sharing norms. Althoughidentifying such informal patterns lends itself to case-oriented ethnographic re-search, the chapters in this volume demonstrate that a range of other methodologicaltoolsincluding small-n comparison, statistical analysis, and rational choice modelsmay also be employed fruitfully in this endeavor.

The contributors to this volume employ three distinct strategies for establishingthe existence of informal institutions. The first strategy, used by Carey and Siavelisand by Taylor-Robinson, is to generate hypotheses about behavioral patterns that areconsistent only with the existence of a particular informal institution, and then testempirically for the existence of those patterns. Thus, Carey and Siavelis hypothesizethat if the informal norm of electoral insurance exists, high-quality losing candidatesare more likely to be rewarded with government posts. Using statistical analysis, theyfind empirical evidence of such a pattern. Similarly, Taylor-Robinson hypothesizesthat if norms of clientelism (as opposed to electoral rules) are driving legislativebehavior, then legislators from poor rural districts are more likely than other legisla-

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tors to sponsor locally oriented pork-barrel projects. She, too, finds statistical evi-dence to support this hypothesis.

A second strategy is to focus directly on actors expectations about the informalrules of the game. By examining actors mutual understanding of the rules, one candistinguish more carefully between informal behavior patterns and informal institu-tions. Ethnography is an important research tool in this task. Several analyses inthis volume (including those by Brinks, Desposato, Freidenberg and Levitsky, MejaAcosta, Samuels, Siavelis, and Van Cott) draw heavily on ethnographic research,identifying shared expectations about informal rules through extensive interviewswith (and observation of ) the actors who are affected by those rules. Such caseexpertise is invaluable for understanding how the actors themselves understand theinformal constraints they face. Yet other methods may also be employed to get atactors expectations. Stokess chapter, for example, offers a novel use of survey re-search techniques to establish shared expectations. Rather than merely gaugingcitizens attitudes and values, she designs survey questions to investigate whethercitizens in different localities in Argentina hold different expectations about whetherfellow voters will punish politicians who behave dishonestly.

A third approach to identifying informal institutions is to focus on mechanisms ofenforcement. If informal behavior is rule-bound, then violations of the rule musttrigger some kind of external sanction. Unlike formal sanctioning mechanisms (i.e.,legal systems), informal sanctioning mechanisms are often subtle, hidden, and evenillegal. They range from different forms of social disapproval (hostile remarks, gossip,ostracism), to the loss of employment, to the use of hired thugs and other means ofextrajudicial violence.

As Brinks and Samuels note in their chapters, a problem with identifying infor-mal institutions through incidents of enforcement is that when they are functioningwell, enforcement is rarely necessary. Still, even rare instances of deviation andpunishment can be telling. For example, Samuels shows how Brazilian politicianswho fail to deliver government contracts to their financial supporters have difficultyraising money in future elections, and how politicians are able to delay or blockgovernment contracts to firms that provide insufficient financial support. He showshow the Collor government blacklisted entrepreneurs who had previously financedCollors presidential bid but balked at another round of donations after his inaugura-tion. Later, when Collor broke the rules and began to investigate corruption outsidehis inner circle, many of the same politicians and entrepreneurs responded bysupporting his impeachment. Similarly, Meja Acosta demonstrates how goingpublic about illicit vote-buying activities serves as a mechanism of enforcing ghostcoalitions in Ecuadors legislature. He shows that when the Durn Ballen govern-

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ment deemed that the Social Christian Partys (PSC) demands had escalated beyondthe terms of the original ghost coalition pact, Vice President Alberto Dahik pub-licly accused PSC leaders of corruption. In response, the PSC launched an im-peachment drive that forced Dahik into exile. Likewise, Langston shows how PRIexecutives used their control over state resources and electoral institutions to ensurethat defectors would lose elections and pay an enormous cost in terms of theirpolitical careers. After defectors failed on three successive occasions during the 1940sand 1950s, the threat of sanction became sufficiently credible that no major PRIpolitician broke the rules for nearly three decades.

In a slightly different vein, Brinkss chapter focuses on permissive rules, orinformal institutions that allow, but do not require, certain behavior. Under theserules, sanctioning operates in a somewhat different manner. Actors may avoid thepermitted behavior without fear of sanction. Instead, punishment is meted out tothose who seek to enforce the formal rules that prohibit the behavior in question(i.e., whistleblowers). Thus, Brinks finds that judges, prosecutors, and police inves-tigators who seek to enforce laws prohibiting extrajudicial killing by police faceharassment by superiors, noncooperation by the police, and even death threats.

The above discussion suggests that efforts to identify and measure informal in-stitutions require substantial knowledge of the communities within which thoserules are embedded. Although this is certainly true, it would be a mistake to identifyinformal institutional analysis only with case study research. In fact, the chapters inthis volume engage in a variety of innovative methods. For example, many of ourcontributors use subnational comparisons to increase the number of observations orcases while holding a variety of national-level variables constant. Thus, Desposatopairs two Brazilian states with similar formal legislative and electoral institutions butdifferent levels of clientelism, thereby setting up a natural experiment that allowshim to isolate the independent effects of clientelism on legislative behavior. Brinksengages in both subnational and controlled cross-national comparisons. His study offive urban areas in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay produced evidence of informalnorms of police violence in Salvador (Brazil), So Paulo (Brazil), and Buenos Aires(Argentina) but not in Crdoba (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay). Stokes usessubnational-level survey data to compare localities in which informal institutions arepresumably strong with those in which they are not.

Other chapters increase the number of observations by comparing single casesacross time. For example, Langston examines evolution of the dedazo across severalpresidencies, from its establishment under Lzaro Crdenas in the 1930s to its col