How do democratic institutional reforms influence informal practices? Several scholars theorize that the greater transparency and regularity of democratic institutions will replace or reshape informal elite practices and economies (e.g., see Henry Hale, Patronal Politics, 2014; Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours, 1998 and Can Russia Modernize? 2013; and Paul D’Anieri, Understanding Ukrainian Politics, 2006). Huseyn Aliyev’s new book is a comparative analysis that supports this thesis and expertly adds to the growing literature on informality and postcommunism by illustrating democratization’s contingent effects on informal practices beyond elites and economies.
Aliyev begins with a thorough and cross-disciplinary discussion of informality, effectively illustrating its importance across communist and postcommunist Europe and Eurasia. His discussion of informality covers several fields in economics, the humanities, and social sciences, and he employs them in identifying a fascinating compilation of region-specific terms (e.g., Poland’s zalatwic’ sprawy (“to arrange something”), Bulgaria’s vruzki (“connections”), or “greasing the wheels” in the United States and United Kingdom). Next, he utilizes the comparative literature on communist totalitarianism to illustrate how Soviet communism failed to formally provide many basic needs, leading the population to rely upon informal practices to govern and function in society. For instance, with the Soviet bureaucracy backlogged and store shelves empty, favor-based blat emerged to help people obtain an apartment or act as currency (p. 43). Aliyev then leverages the comparative literature on communist legacies to bolster his analysis. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the informal practices generated during communism remained and encountered new regime types and elite desires. Where there was a high degree of malleability, as in “informal states” like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, he argues, democratic institutional reforms were allowed to arise and shape informality and its behavior in society (p. 12).
In malleable states, institutional reforms encounter different conditions, leading to variations in informal practices. Aliyev argues that the need for informal practices diminishes when democratic institutional reforms are accompanied by both broad consensus (among elites, the wider population, and branches of government) and consistent, long-term implementation (p. 182). When consensus and consistent implementation are absent, informal practices expand to dominate democratic institutions (p. 182). He maintains that Georgia is an example of the former, Moldova is an example of the latter, and Ukraine since 2014 could go either way.
Aliyev’s argument is convincing through his case comparisons. He shows that in Georgia, popular demand (e.g., the Rose Revolution) gave former President Mikheil Saakashvili a mandate to implement and sustain democratic reforms in higher education, health care, the judiciary, and policing, thus reducing crime and petty corruption (Chap. 4). On the other hand, in Moldova, elite fragmentation (across groups and within reformers) combined with a weak oppositional society (over 30% of the population lives abroad, with continued youth exodus and a substantial GDP coming from remittances), leading to informal brokering as the means to political consensus and reform. With informal networks and norms largely shaping the means and operation of formal institutions, Moldova’s elite and wider population began to rely upon and expand their usage of informal networks and norms to fulfill needs (Chap. 5). Finally, the insights from Georgia and Moldova are aptly applied to Ukraine. Following the ousting of Victor Yanukovich, democratic reform became widely embraced by elites and the populace, and continue to be implemented across all branches of government. The author is not entirely optimistic about Ukraine’s future. Nevertheless, he makes an important contribution to understanding contemporary Ukrainian political decisions beyond Ukraine’s eastern conflict. In doing so, he outlines the formation, nuances, and strength of several informal institutions established since communism, institutions that democratic reforms will have to deal with directly and potentially replace.
All of this said, the book is not without flaws. While Aliyev is less concerned with why consensus and sustained implementation arise, largely chalking them up to “network ties” (p. 127), his discussion of informality often seems too narrow. For instance, limiting the discussion of informality to networks and norms diminishes the potential role of informal social practices like ethnicity and identity—each of which some scholars suspect as guiding behavior and shaping political divisions in Moldova. For example, many potential members of the Moldovan community have for decades questioned whether they are indeed Moldovan, Romanian, or something else, opening room for elites to make ethnic claims that fail to represent a popular majority. If this is the case, the fragmentation of ethnicities and identities in Ukraine may, too, provide utility in understanding the country’s democratic fate.
Additionally, the analysis of corruption leaves something to be desired, as there is a growing scholarly belief that trust in institutions is not necessarily a sign of informality’s decline, nor of democratic institutional reform. In addition to describing how particular policies functioned across his cases, Aliyev relies on attitudinal data to further illustrate how changes in policy shifted popular feelings toward state institutions. Most notably, trust toward government institutions is rising in Georgia and declining in Moldova, signaling that “the popular perception of these institutions is likely to determine whether citizens would choose to continue relying on informal constraints or prefer dealing with formal institutions” (p. 182). The data seem telling, but recent studies on established authoritarian regimes and democracies may sow doubt as to whether trust in institutions is an adequate measure of informal practices and their relationship to democratization. For instance, Wenfang Tang (2018) illustrates in American Affairs that the U.S. populace has low levels of institutional trust despite high degrees of democratic consolidation, while China has high levels of institutional trust despite the heavy use of informal practices (e.g., local protests as a means to federal and local reform). Similarly, Georgia’s and Moldova’s perceptions of institutions may also be a reflection of “government responsiveness” and not necessarily democratic efficiency.
Despite these issues, Aliyev effectively contributes to an understanding of the ways in which democratic reforms are shaping informal practices differently in hybrid regimes. In addition to outlining policy implications that stem from the analysis, When Informal Institutions Change echoes the warnings about new democratization in Europe made by Andrew C. Janos (2001) in East European Politics and Societies. Postcommunist states share many informal practices, but their variations are often equally numerous. Democratization’s flexibility and approach to these differences will surely influence what communism left behind.
