Informal institutions and the regulation of smuggling in North Africa

Gallien, Max (2019) Informal institutions and the regulation of smuggling in North Africa. Perspectives on Politics. ISSN 1537-5927

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Abstract

Contemporary writing on North African borderlands invokes the idea of a general, unregulated porosity through which small-scale informal traders of food or textiles move alongside drug smugglers and terrorists. I challenge that conception, demonstrating that the vast majority of smuggling activity is in fact highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs, quantity, and types of goods that can pass through certain nodes, typically segmenting licit from illicit goods.While informal, the institutions regulating this trade are largely impersonal and contain third-party enforcement, hence providing a direct empirical challenge to common characterisations of informal institutions in political science. I argue that revisiting the characteristics associated with informal institutions, and understanding them as contingent on their political environment, can provide a new starting point for studying institutions, the politics of informality, state capacity, and the regulation of illegal economies.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectiv...
Additional Information:	© 2019 American Political Science Association
Divisions:	International Development
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General)
Date Deposited:	03 Dec 2018 14:30
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 21:45
Funders:	Economic & Social Research Council
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/90957

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