Informal Politics and the State

Political scientists typically study how formal institutions work, yet many of the most interesting political phenomena being investigated today involve informal institutions. The books under review represent advances in an emerging research program on informal politics and the state. They address several important questions, including (1) when does informality undermine the state, and when does it compensate for deficiencies in the state? (2) what are the historical roots of the mechanisms by which informality interacts with the state? (3) what are the sources of cohesion that enable actors to pursue goals informally? and (4) how does the relationship between informal politics and the state change over time? Informal politics is found to be consequential even in the presence of strong states, and can sometimes interact with the state in unexpected ways. The theoretical issues raised by these works have broader implications for how informality should be conceptualized and studied within comparative politics.