In Southeast Europe, there is a growing disjunction between “the way the world is” and the world that is described by law. The informal practices that address problems when formal institutions fail can be celebrated as spaces of creative problem-solving, or criticized as spaces for favouritism and corruption. When ruling political parties control informal networks, they consolidate the hold of unaccountable actors on power, moving from state capture to societal capture.
This book presents findings from a collaborative, multidisciplinary research project. Over three years, a group of forty researchers examined informal practices in nine Southeast European states, adopting a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
This close look at the Balkans illuminates persistent deficits in state legitimacy and capacity. The evidence allows a critical assessment of “Europeanisation” processes that produce only superficial formal changes, and of ways that networks of mutual assistance turn into instruments of social control and closure.

Eric Gordy is Professor of Political and Cultural Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project (in-formality.com).Predrag Cveticanin is Profesor of Socology of Culture at the Faculty of Arts, University of Nis, Serbia and the director of the independent research institute The Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe.

1 The INFORM project, informality, and societal capture
2 Social closure in captured societies
3 Politics in Southeast Europe: State and societal capture behind a liberal-democratic façade
4 Informal economies in Southeast Europe: Lost opportunities
5 Networks of trust and control in a world of the powerless
6 Where informality works, formal institutions can learn
7 Europeanisation meets informality: Extracting advantage from reform
8 Dealing with informality and societal capture
Bibliography
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