Visible and invisible informalities and institutional transformation. Lessons from transition countries: Georgia, Romania, Uzbekistan

Kristof Van Assche, Anastasiya Shtaltovna and Anna-Katharina Hornidge

Visible and Invisible Informalities and Institutional Transformation in the Transition Countries of Georgia, Romania, and Uzbekistan

Introduction: Informal and Formal Institutions

In this chapter we outline a perspective on institutional transformation that locates the focus of analytic reflection and policy intervention in configurations of formal and informal institutions. It might be good to emphasize this from the start, as it deviates from most of the literature that explicitly speaks of institutions and institutional change, where trust is placed in formal or informal institutions, or where (as in the influential work of Helmke and Levitsky) a few potential rela-tions between formal and informal institutions are distinguished. Praise when they are supposedly corrective, blame when they are considered undermining We argue that formal and informal institutions continuously shape each other (we call this dialectics), while they are also shaped by prior formal and informal institutions – one can speak of a necessary combination of path and interde-pendence (cf. Van Assche et al., 2011b).

Formal institutions here are coordination and interaction rules that are considered, in a social setting, the ones that should be guiding deci-sion making in a specific situation. Formal institutions are therefore not only laws, plans and policies that emanate from states, but also unwrit-ten agreements at community (or tribal) level, rules guiding trade in the margins of modern society or in pre-modern societies, and, at the level of organizations, a variety of documents covering the internally agreed self-presentation, operational procedures, and vision for the future. Infor-mal institutions are all other rules that exist in parallel with the formal ones: rules that can only exist in the shadow of formality, but simultaneously shape the functioning and effects of formality. In other words: informal institutions are only comprehensible as alternatives to formal institutions.

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A different way of saying this, coming closer to Niklas Luhmann’s the-ory of social systems, is that formal/informal is a distinction that is made over and over again, with each decision that is being made.. Assuming the presence of a variety of potential rules (as coordination tools) that can guide decision making, each of them will be labelled as formal or informal, and only from that starting point will develop the array of modalities and effects of informalities that has been observed so many times: rules to break the rules, to bend them, to selectively apply them, to forget, to ignore, and so forth.

What is formal and informal can change from situation to situation. The evolution of state organizations, of differentiated law, politics and economy helps in stabilizing expectations, in reducing the complexity of each decision situation (ending up in a specialized environment), so that it is clearer which institutions are supposed to be coordinative. But this does not change the fact that the distinction has to be made repeatedly, and that for outside observers, it is not always clear what is considered formal within another state, community or organization.

Because other social systems, whether they be organizations or other function systems, or other states in the modus of segmentary differen-tiation, are never entirely transparent for each other, the observation of formality and informality, of the location of the distinction, and of the stra-tegic and semantic universes marking these social systems, always remains problematic. This makes it difficult to ascertain which configuration of for-mality and informality guides the reproduction of these systems, and how formality and informality continuously reshape each other in this process.

Leaning again on systems theory, we can revisit our statement that configurations of formal and informal institutions are what count. One can also see now that the role of this or that rule in decision making is bound to shift continuously, cannot be observed easily from the outside, and will have effects that are similarly unpredictable, and impossible to categorize as either good or bad. One rule can be formal in one setting, informal in another one, and in the case of formality, the recombination with other rules, formal and informal, cannot be predicted and tends to have myriad effects. One law can undermine other laws five years later, one law can be ignored suddenly, one informal rule can guide jurisprudence, can become law, or not, while one law can corrode positive effects of other laws, promoting resource distributions that lead to the slow emergence of a different social order.

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Therefore, operational closure, differentiation, complexity, evolution, path and interdependence lead to a plea for reduced ambition in institu-tional design, and to a plea for a consistent envisioning of formality and informality together (configurations), and for continuous observation of the dialectics between formality and informality. This points in a method-ological direction: anthropology, with its tradition of patient observation and reflexivity on ethic/emic distinctions, is par excellence suitable to con-tribute to theory formation on formality and informality and institutional change. Moreover, the dazzling complexity and variety of institutional transformation that can be observed in postsocialist “transition” countries, is a very rich field of observation. For that reason, we illustrate and develop our perspective on institutional configurations and transformation by means of three succinct case studies in postsocialist locations. We chose the domain of spatial governance, i.e. the organization of space as influ-enced by formal and informal institutions, because it offers a window on many mechanisms of institutional transformation (many policies and organizations affect spatial organization) but also, simply, because this is the policy domain we often worked in.

While anthropologically inspired case studies in transition countries are, we believe, very suitable for providing a deeper understanding of insti-tutional change and the institutional configurations governing it, theoret-ically we believe it is necessary to find guidance in perspectives that give a place to contingency, complexity, and to both dependency and adaptability. We consider the combination of social systems theory (which provided the basic reasoning for this introduction) and institutional economics to be promising in this regard. Institutional economics makes it easier to link systems theory with mainstream discussions in policy studies, devel-opment research, but, substantively, it also contributes a strong empirical tradition to Luhmann’s analyses of slow societal differentiation and of the slow stabilization of expectations that enabled more and more types of interaction and coordination over the centuries. From institutional eco-nomics (North, Greiff, Eggertsson, Ostrom, Seabright, Easterly) we borrow the distinction organization/institution (compatible with systems theory), the concept of institutions as coordination rules enabling diverse inter-actions and transactions and the view of institutional formation as slow stabilization of expectations.

Just as North et al. (2009), Greif (2007), Ostrom (2005) and Seabright (2010) gradually opened up the concept of “institution” to include a wide


variety of coordination mechanisms, some conscious and some embedded in cultural and organizational routines and assumptions, systems theory allows for a combination of conscious and unconscious rules of coordi-nation, as the autopoietic reproduction of a social system is never entirely observable, and understandable from within the system. No organization is fully aware of all the internal decision making rules, nor of the full com-plexity of adaptations to the environment. While the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of informality has famously raged in institu-tional economics (compare, for example, Easterly, 2006, and de Soto, 2000), we find nothing in the theoretical frame of institutional economics that leads necessarily to a position regarding positive or negative effects. What most of the historical and comparative analyses in the field show is that the diversity of transactions in communities grew together with the diver-sity of elements and interactions between these elements. Growing societal complexity was paralleled by differentiation and stabilization of more and more institutions. Once again, this is in line with a systems perspective. Cause and effects cannot be distinguished: new institutions enable new interactions and new interactions require new institutions, and the sum of evolutions in both lines pushes society further in the direction of differen-tiation and complexity.

At the organizational level, for Luhmann, a purely formal or infor-mal organization, reproducing purely on formal or informal rules, has no place in autopoietic systems theory (Hernes and Bakken, 2003; Seidl, 2005). Organizations – even those with a long history of adaptation to various formal environments – do reveal intricate patterns of informality (North, 2005; Ostrom, 2005; Allina-Pisano, 2008; Shtaltovna et al., 2011). For Luhmann, an organization is a continuing network of communica-tions (Luhmann ,1995); it cannot be reduced to any formality. Paper rules, either written down locally, or from a centralized legal system, can never completely guide the self-reproduction of an organization (Luhmann, 1990). The institutional economists do not start from autopoietic princi-ples, but the diverse cases and histories they present are compatible with these assertions derived from Luhmann, and postsocialist anthropology (Verdery, Allina- Pisano and others). Eschewing autopoietic theory never-theless unearths a level of complexity in organizational and societal repro-duction that transcends that of economics, and points even more strongly in the direction of a systems perspective – in the direction of an evolution-ary approach to institutional change where local rules to break the rules


(and other informalities) are just as important to decide the fate of new formalities as the “best practices” (encoded in formalities) imported from elsewhere (remember the initial confidence of Western advisors after the fall of the Soviet bloc).

Formal institutions, like legal rules and the statutes of political parties, emerge out of a network of informal institutions. They emerge and are institutionalized and reified to speak with Berger and Luckmann’s terms (1984), when players have crystallized, when their roles are clear, when there is a history of cooperation, communication, specialization, trust (Greif, 2007; Roth, 2007). Or, in Luhmann’s (1995) words, when a history of system differentiation has developed. For the economists, as for Luhmann, formal institutions cannot, in the end, replace informal institutions (e.g. Greif, 2007 and they cannot be created from scratch.

With all the emphasis on complexity and contingency, we do not want to create the impression that there is no niche left for institutional design, and that, in the light of opacity, imperfect analyses are useless analyses. We will argue that the proposed theoretical frame, and its development through cases, leaves space for normative assessments and interventions. It is only that the interventions ought to be inspired by analyses of evolutions of formal/informal configurations, and the assessment focussed on three questions: does the present configuration (i) deliver the goods, i.e. perform well enough according to the desires and preferences in society, (ii) con-tribute to the stabilization of expectations in a differentiated society, i.e. does it maintain the value of specialization and separation of powers, and (iii) does it maintain real options to transform institutions without disrupt-ing stability, i.e. does it contain effective and accepted rules to change the rules? In the next sections, it will be demonstrated that, from this perspec-tive, the management of transparency and opacity becomes more import-ant. In the assessment of a specific formal/informal configuration, positive answers to questions (i), (ii) and (iii) hinge on a cultivation of reflexivity within all governmental actors, as well as with civil society organizations trying to influence government (and its production of formal institutions). Reflexivity then entails a continuous assessment of the configuration, and a continuous attempt to grasp that configuration, and to keep it as visible as possible. We will elaborate on this in the analysis of the case studies.

Before this, we briefly introduce the three cases. The case studies are grounded in prior field research, and highlight the evolution of spatial gov-ernance in three areas: the city of Tbilisi, the region of Khorezm and the


marsh area of the Danube delta. In each case, a different mix of formal and informal institutions governed land use decisions before and after commu-nism. In the analysis of the cases, we reframe our observations in systems theoretical and institutional terms, and discern the importance of analys-ing and managing transparency in the evolving configuration of formal and informal institutions. Before entering into the case studies, however, we briefly introduce a few key concepts from social systems theory that will feature in the further analyses. The case descriptions are kept short on purpose, to leave more space for the analysis and because the cases serve to illustrate and further develop the more general theoretical perspective proposed here. For more empirical detail, we refer to the papers where we dealt more extensively with each case. Because the overall purpose is the-ory construction, we decided not to separate the case analyses, but refer to all three cases in an analytic section that, because of this broader perspec-tive, enables theory formation.

Case Introductions

The cases are based on fieldwork, document analysis and literature review; each case will refer to the papers where the underlying research is pre-sented in more detail. For each case, we give a brief introductory narrative on the evolution of spatial governance. In the next section, the case analy-sis, we dig deeper and compare the cases as to informalities in transition, and the uses of opacity and transparency.

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia, a Caucasian country that became inde-pendent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As in other Soviet republics, spatial governance was the result of the interactions of a multi-tude of state organizations. Spatial planning (planirovka) was a branch of economic planning (planirovanne). Gosplan was the ministry responsible for economic planning, while Gosstroi was its physical planning and con-struction department. Each of them had branches at the level of republics


and in most large cities. In theory, physical plans derived logically from economic plans, and smaller scale plans were simply detailing the general sketches made in Moscow. Supposedly, the genplan, comparable to the Western concept of a comprehensive plan, but then much more compre-hensive, was guiding the development of each significant city. Capital cit-ies were considered guiding entities for the development of the republics, so their development received considerable attention in Moscow. In rural areas, collective farms and state farms (kolkhozi and sovkhozi) were sup-posedly planning their territory according to the economic development plans made in the centre and refined at lower levels, with an input, beside the planning agencies and their technical implementation organizations, of local and regional political legislative and executive bodies, at rayon and oblast levels (see French, 1995; Ruble, 1995; Van Assche et al., 2009).

In practice, urban planners had little influence. The appearance of plan-ning, i.e. uniformity, in many cases came from the elaborate system of norms and standards (SNIIP) that de facto coordinated more transactions. In Mos-cow, other ministries and affiliated enterprises were usually more influential than the planning ministry, while that same pattern repeated itself at lower levels. The pressure from below also showed itself in constant renegotiation of virtually all plan elements. Continuous scarcity of resources added to the importance of these informalities. In the rural areas, the collective farms functioned much more as local government than they were supposed to, and most physical planning was undertaken by the farms, while economic plan-ning was also in many cases more negotiable than the plans and rules would suggest (Allina-Pisano, 2008; Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012).

All this applied to the whole USSR. In Georgia, after independence, the rural areas became devoid of any form of planning. Collective farms were dismantled quickly (they never took hold in some remote areas), and land was privatized by dividing it into small parcels, in order to promote subsistence farming, and reduce the risk of hunger and more social unrest. In the cities, development came to a halt, and the practice of, and remain-ing belief in, spatial planning virtually disappeared (Van Assche et al., 2009). The difference between the capital and the countryside, already pro-nounced under the Soviets, became larger (Van Assche et al., 2012).

In the Georgian capital, the 1990s were chaotic and dangerous (with Tajikistan, Georgia had the most tumultuous start). In 1992–94, little spa-tial planning occurred, but also little investment. With the takeover by Shevardnadze, the situation slowly stabilized, capital started to become


available again, and investment in real estate kicked off towards the end of the decade (Van Assche et al., 2010; Van Assche and Salukvadze, 2012). A web of Soviet-era organizations survived and pretended to have the same planning function as in the past. Architects became developers, academics became designers, and officials became bankers.

With the Saakashvili government, the professed and mostly practised neo-liberal ideology dismissed most Soviet practices, including planning, and aspired to follow, in many cases, an American model of democracy (Waters, 2004; Wheatley, 2005). The Soviet master-plans (genplans) that had at least some impact in the USSR days were left intact but inactive for many years, until in 2009 a new version was adopted. Availability of cap-ital increased again and markets stabilized. The size of projects grew and expertise was imported to compensate for what had been lost. Planning was and is mostly project planning, and the new masterplan is selectively implemented (Van Assche et al., 2012).

Development was made possible by the availability of capital, and an increased demand for new residences after the safety situation improved, international relations were rebuilt, and locals with some assets were tired of their Soviet housing. Different groups wanted places of distinction. The belief that banks were stable enough enabled the inflow of international capital, and the start of a mortgage industry (for buyers) and develop-ment loans (for developers). The fact that development started brought the need for spatial governance again – the need for some form of planning. Ambiguities within the ruling class and within the population at large vis-à-vis developers’ freedom and users’/buyers’ expectations of quality envi-ronments, did not abate, and translated into ambiguous attitudes towards plans and planning. Nevertheless, the belief in the long-term existence of the market and of market players made long-term perspectives more prev-alent among developers, and even encouraged a belief in some form of planning as a precondition for market fairness and for protection of real estate values (Van Assche et al., 2009, 2012).

Danube Delta

The Danube delta is a vast complex of marshlands (ca. 6000 km2) in Roma-nia and Ukraine. Ethnic diversity and the sensitive border made it suscep-tible to interventions by the central government, but inaccessibility made


it difficult to control (Van Assche et al., 2008). On the Romanian side, Ceauşescu moved people into the area, tried unsuccessfully to drain and cultivate it, and brought in industries that collapsed together with commu-nism. Under Ceauşescu, the future was codified in the so-called “complex plan for the delta”. On the Ukrainian side, more of the delta had already been reclaimed, since middle of the eighteenth century, when the Russian empire wrested this area from Ottoman control, and was eager to settle it, as a buffer for the new economic powerhouse, Odessa. Borders changed a few times, but after the Second World War, Stalin separated Moldavia from Romania, turned it into a Soviet republic, covering parts of the pre-delta, while the areas closest to sea became firmly part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This meant that the Soviet planning system came to apply there. Because of different priorities within the USSR, reclamation and develop-ment of this area was not high on the agenda, whereas, for the Romanian regime, the delta represented one of the few areas that was imagined to offer opportunities for easy development and quick success.

While under communism, the ecological diversity of the area was not highly valued, this did come to the foreground right after the fall of the regimes (Van Assche et al., 2011 a, b). In Romania, a UNESCO biosphere reserve was established, under the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Admin-istration (DDBRA), which was responsible for the nature conservation objec-tives, but also for the wellbeing of the villagers in the area. On the Ukrainian side, a smaller UNESCO reserve was formed. In the Romanian reserve, DDBRA was an institutional exception, in the sense that local and regional governments were drastically weakened in the area, and the powers of these governmental actors largely placed in the hands of an organization (DDBRA) that nominally fostered nature conservation in a locally sensitive manner, but de facto showed little interest in either nature or local interests. A concession system started, to manage the fish stocks, and the concessionaires turned out to be small in number and well connected in the capital. Fish stocks further declined, and local fishermen, relabelled poachers, could only make their liv-ing by working for the concessionaires, under conditions defined by them. Dissent was presented as reverting to old habits of lawless resource use.

So, as there was a history of mistrust vis-à-vis governmental actors, and as the major assets in the delta (fish, reed and recreation land) were de facto privatized, under the false label of sustainable management, many locals were forced to work as powerless labourers of new concessionaires, or rel-egated to the margins of the law, eking a living out of little shady deals and


poaching. In recent years, the professed citizen participation still did not come, but more attention is being paid to economic development. In 2005, the World Bank declared that the original goals of sustainable development, i.e. conservation and wise resource use with an eye for the needs of local communities, had not been attained. The European Development Bank had backed out of earlier financial promises for similar reasons, and for fear that the money would not be used appropriately (Van Assche et al., 2011a).

In this “ecological” regime, especially on the Romanian side, citizen-ship meant something different than in the rest of the country. Transfor-mation options were limited because many checks and balances were not in place, because of the generalized distrust mentioned, and the opacity of spatial governance. The green institutions are clearly used as smoke-screens for other activities by other players, but it is in the direct interests of all powerful players (both the ones that profess green goals and oth-ers) to keep things invisible. On the Ukrainian side, the situation is slightly different, because much fewer people live and work in the protected area, because there is less of a legacy of secret development plans and hidden failures, and because local government is more functional and assertive.

On the Romanian side, “planning” is officially in the hands of the DDBRA, but in practice their resources are limited, their hands are tied by other inter-ests, and producing and revealing plans and preceding analyses is risky for many players. On the other hand, projects do happen at the local level. If for-eign investment can be found for projects, this is usually welcomed, even if the linkage with more comprehensive policies is rhetorical at best. A church restoration, a new beachfront development, a wetland restoration project, all can be discussed. Local zoning plans do exist, but are rarely implemented, and, just as at the regional level, even showing them is considered risky. An addi-tional complication is the contested delineation of powers and responsibilities between municipalities, counties, and the reserve administration, an ambigu-ity that did not disappear since the enactment of the Delta Law in 1993, is exploited by some, and renders stabilization of governance difficult.

Khorezm, Uzbekistan

In the Uzbek province of Khorezm, a history of Soviet agricultural invest-ment left its traces. Soviet infrastructure development started in the 1930s. Irrigation infrastructure, later drainage systems, roads, villages and cities


were established. The whole spatial organization of the region was the product of Soviet planning, by planning organizations and agricultural organizations. Most importantly, spatial governance was under the aus-pices of collective farms, who were self-governing and covered most of the territory. The never ending stream of plans emanating from different levels and departments of government had to be implemented there. The relative autonomy of the kolkhoz made it possible to integrate various directives into workable land use plans, but it also made it possible to bend those, to accommodate local desires and to selectively implement higher level plans (Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012).

After independence, in 1991, the kolkhoz disappeared gradually and local government (earlier mostly located at the kolkhoz) had to be recon-figured (Trevisani, 2008; Veldwisch, 2008). Land remained governmental property but a system of long-term leases enabled the emergence of private farms. For the farmers, investment and development were not easy because the state procurement system for cotton and wheat stayed in place. The real implications of lease were not always known to farmers, and government ownership of the banks adds another obstacle to private development. Power and responsibility moved to the district level, more specifically to the district executive, but there, the local knowledge, assets, and planning powers of the kolkhoz could not be matched. Meanwhile all actors, high and low, maintain that nothing changed, that their powers and responsibil-ities are the same. (Despite this, a lot has changed.) The often democratic decision making of the kolkhoz, and thus local government, is gone, but that is rarely mentioned. The practice of planning changed drastically, with investment and infrastructural development much reduced.

Despite all the changes, the two most important decisions remained the same: where the cotton goes and where the water goes. Farmers are less interested in cotton, as they barely make money selling it to the government (the procurement system), and prefer rice, which usually fetches a good price at local markets. Rice requires more water so, in this irrigation-dependent system, water management and land management are necessarily entangled, and grey areas in one decision domain are necessarily linked to grey areas in the other one. It is too easy to say (as in the official story) that farmers are creative in avoiding state orders regarding cotton. Rather, both farmers and a wide variety of governmental actors (many of whom are not paid sufficiently) are dependent on each other, and on the money coming from rice cultivation. The “bribes” climbing the hierarchy of governmental organizations meet the


top-down orders to plant cotton and also line pockets, but not many. How and when pressure and counter-pressure meet and are negotiated is not very clear, and there are very strong reasons to keep this arrangement hidden. Even the people giving orders to plant cotton profit from rice, but it is not in their interest to change the official storyline.

An additional reason for this is that the projection of continuity with the past and the projection of unity and cohesiveness in government, behind the icon of the President, serves the interests of many individuals and factions competing for power and resources behind that facade (Van Assche and Hornidge, 2012). Meanwhile, investment even for the mainte-nance of the Soviet irrigation and drainage infrastructure, is insufficient and, with the increased opacity, producing internally a clear image of the overall situation became increasingly difficult. The same applies to devis-ing appropriate policy tools to address the issues that are observed.

Informalities and Transition

In all three cases, the starting point of the evolution in spatial governance that we presented was socialist in character, i.e. socialist spatial planning. In each case, the difference between paper planning and the reality of coor-dination in decision making was significant. In the socialist period, infor-mality was in all three cases first of all a matter of selectivity in formal institutions, rules to apply the rules and to break the rules (Smith, 1986; French, 1995; Van Assche et al., 2010). In the rural areas, collective farms were prime sites of policy integration and adaptation (Verdery, 2003). Most players, in other words, were aware of the limitations of the formal arrangements, without abandoning them altogether (cf. Kononenko and Moshes, 2011). Rather, in a Machiavellian fashion, the silent consensus was that sometimes leadership entails selective application and breaking of rules, as it includes the possibility to change and adapt rules (Mans-field, 1996). Since leadership in communist regimes was spread over many actors, the game had to be played in many places. Simultaneously, the scat-tered responsibility also allowed many actors not to take leadership roles, not to implement plans when possible, and to divert from them when nec-essary (Hough and Fainsod, 1979; Kornai and Rose-Ackerman, 2004).


Despite these commonalities, each case represents a different evolution, with a different mix of formal and informal institutions as a starting point, and a different configuration as the (current) result (cf. Gel’man, 2004; Gal-lina, 2010; Czaplicka et al., 2009). We try to discern the main differences and the drivers, and present this in a narrative that combines insights from all three cases. The narrative is structured around a series of concepts that recur as relevant in distinguishing pathways of governance.

The starting point is certainly an important distinguishing factor between the cases (Kornai and Rose-Ackerman, 2004; Johnson, 2001; Van Assche et al., 2011b). Tbilisi, the Danube delta and Khorezm had distinctly different economic and political positions in the communist world, were marked by different histories, different sets of players and different rules of interaction.

The Danube delta is the most outspoken case in this regard. Roma-nian communism in general did not have the level of service provision of the Soviet Union and its European satellites, and the delta was a politi-cal, cultural and economic margin (Van Assche et al., 2008; Pusca, 2009). Under Ceauşescu, local government in the delta was very weak, and most people with a job worked directly for regional organizations responsi-ble for engineering, land reclamation and fishing. Informal coordination of land use was mostly restricted to small-scale resistance, to survival strategies in the margins. Its marginality and low level of organization made it an easy prey after communism to regional and national elites extending their grip on the delta resources (mostly fish). And these same initial qualities made it easier for powerful actors to work without much opposition and visibility.

In Tbilisi, a history of Russian and then Soviet urbanization and urban planning, with an active local political and cultural community, had cre-ated fertile ground for a reinvention of planning in a more democratic and capitalist guise (Vardosanidze, 2000), while in Khorezm, the spatial and organizational structures of Soviet agricultural development largely determined the ensuing dialectics of formal and informal institutions (Trevisani, 2008; Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012). The main shift after independence was embodied in the disappearance of the kolkhoz as the de facto site of spatial governance. This disappearance caused many of the subsequent changes in the game.

This brings us to the structure of the field of players. The evolution of spatial governance and its dialectics of formal and informal institutions


hinges on the map of actors. Actors evolve, emerge and disappear, but once an actor is established, it embodies a strong path-dependence in evolving governance (cf. Allina-Pisano, 2008; Ledeneva, 2008; Grzymala- Busse, 2010).

In Soviet Khorezm, the function of the kolkhoz leader made local and spatial integration of various policies possible; his accepted role embodied an acceptance of a set of informal institutions, aimed at creating synergies, addressing local needs and using local knowledge (Shtlatovna, 2011). In Tbilisi, the figure of the developer emerged as the main driver of city devel-opment since about 2000 and the configuration of formal and informal institutions observed now can only be understood against the background of developers’ power (Van Assche and Salukvadze, 2012). In the Danube delta, the biosphere reserve administration, established after indepen-dence, became the single most dominant actor, and the weak input of local governments in spatial governance can be attributed to its unique role (Van Assche et al., 2011b). Its marginalization of other players correlated with their continued reliance on informal institutions to eke out a living.

The map of actors also has consequences for the role of plans and spa-tial policies. The story of Tbilisi, where financiers transformed into devel-opers and bankers, showed that such economic formalization of actors enabled their integration into, and stabilization of, a neo-liberal political and legal system. Once the neo-liberal order took shape, these actors, orig-inally wary of any formal regulation and planning, were able to develop long-term visions, embrace forms of the rule of law and see value (asset protection) in formal spatial planning.

As Grzymala-Busse (2002, 2010) and others pointed out (e.g. Gel’man, 2004; Pusca, 2009; Gallina, 2010; Hayoz, 2010), socialist societies had their elites – and their transformations and manoeuvring both shaped and were shaped by the configuration of formal and informal institutions. In Roma-nia, old elites remained in place and to a large extent wrote new rules that fit-ted them well (Pusca, 2009; Van Assche et al., 2009). In Khorezm, part of the old elite took complete power, but relied and relies on a more intricate web of informality (Collins, 2006; Trevisani, 2008). In Tbilisi, most of what drives development by the new elite can be captured within the realm of formal institutions, with the exception of decision making on major projects, where the separation of powers has become less clear (Van Assche et al., 2010).

Both Khorezm and the Danube delta illustrate that elite control can lead to an effective role reversal of formal and informal (cf. Merkel and


Croissant, 2000; Gel’man, 2004). In the Danube delta, what ensued in the ini-tial chaos after independence, the large-scale fishing of the delta by groups with political connections high up the ladder, was paradoxically legitimized by the establishment of new institutions aiming at nature conservation (Van Assche et al., 2011a). Thus, formerly legal practices (subsistence fishing) became illegal and formerly illegal practices (large-scale unsustainable fish-ing) remained illegal but were held in place by a new organization with formally opposite goals (nature conservation) and elite ties.

Even where elites are clearly central in spatial governance, one can usu-ally observe an array of accommodations between actors (cf. Solnick, 1998; Commercio, 2010; Eggertsson, 2005; Easterly, 2006; Ledeneva, 2006). In Tbilisi, this is not so much an issue, because the formal institutions largely do what they are expected to do. In the Danube delta, however, full enforce-ment of all formal arrangements would cause too many socio-economic problems locally (poverty), drawing unwanted attention from foreign observers, so much of the illegal subsistence fishing (and smuggling) is quietly tolerated (Van Assche et al., 2009). In Khorezm, the pattern of the accommodation is the most complex one, as all levels and players share an interest in pretending that the formal rules are always followed (Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012; Hornidge et al., 2012). The arrangement is significantly less stable than under the Soviets, more risky for local players, and less attuned to local accommodation, but on the other hand, there does seem to be an understanding that such local accommodation, adaptation to necessities and opportunities invisible from above, is necessary.

The role of plans in previous steps in the evolution of spatial governance makes a difference (cf. Roy, 2009; Van Assche et al., 2011b; Berrisford, 2011). Tbilisi offers a clear example. In Tbilisi, the Soviet master-plan was partly a product of a silent negotiation between many actors in the government. Its selective implementation was also an outcome of such negotiation and com-petition between government actors (cf. Hough and Fainsod, 1979; French, 1995). This is a situation that could be observed in most cities in the western Soviet Union – cities with a history of civic involvement and bureaucratic rule (Hahn and Friedgut, 1994; Czaplicka et al., 2009). The selective imple-mentation of plans thus hinged on often unpredictable interactions between players, but this unpredictability was tempered by a different layer of formal regulation: norms and standards (cf. Bendor, 1985; French, 1995; Van Assche et al., 2010). Thus, in case no other players intervened, no strong planners or local governments came up with strong ideas, at least there would be an


appearance of planning, as the norms created enough uniformity in the built environment. That visual regularity then functioned as a sign of a well-oiled planning machine. In transition, that not-so-oiled planning machine did fall apart, and few planners kept their jobs. Those who did, lost their role in the game of spatial development and the role of plans in the new context, dominated by property rights and development planning, is significantly smaller. Their very selective implementation now is more than in the past the result of direct elite interference (as opposed to a competition between many actors; cf. Suny, 1995; Gallina, 2010).

This aspect of competition brings us to the issue of the common good. If the formal plans, officially embodying the common good, were usually not fully implemented, this did not prevent other mechanisms from furthering a common good in different ways. The informal competition between many state actors often functioned as an equivalent of democratic checks and bal-ances (Ruble, 1995; Burawoy, 2001). In Tbilisi, a myriad of actors had a bear-ing on the drawing and implementation of city and neighbourhood plans, and in Khorezm, where the multitude of plans and policies influencing agricultural land use were impossible to combine and implement in many respects (Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012), the kolkhoz served as a site of decision making where the common good of the local community could be envisioned in the adaptation of these incompatible or even detrimen-tal policies. In present-day Khorezm, too, sticking to all rules would make profitable farming and maintaining local services impossible. At the same time, the government does not respect land lease agreements, so the farm-ers’ trust in formal institutions dissipated. The corrective informalities eying the common good are also hard to maintain, since the necessary integration site (the kolkhoz) has gone. Under the Soviets, it was understood that the common good was multifaceted and that different goals could be striven for in local government (cf. Humphrey, 2002; Allina-Pisano, 2008), while now the only signals from the top concern goods that hold absolutely no value for the local community and undermine even basic survival.

Summarizing the analysis thus far, we can say that, in evolutionary paths of governance, formal and informal institutions are tied together in patterns, in configurations that shape decisions affecting spatial orga-nization. Shifts in formality engender shifts in informality, and are partly determined by previous configurations of formal and informal. In the study of empirical paths, this entails that a number of parameters become important to understand what is practically possible in spatial governance,


and to envision what the effect of changes in formality would be. One of them is, maybe obviously, the starting point, a governance arrangement marked by a specific configuration of formal and informal. If from the start laws or plans are not taken seriously, to name a thing, new laws are likely to have a different effect than would be the case in places where laws are guiding most decisions. Secondly, the map of actors and their relations is of importance. This applies to the original map, at the starting point, which can anchor certain power/knowledge configurations and thus shape the governance path, but it also applies to new actors (e.g. developers, business consultants, planning firms), who, once crystallized in roles, will further shape the evolution of governance in its formal and informal aspects.

The elites are a special group of actors; the presence and nature of elites, their resource endowment and/or position of power gives them a special influence on the evolution of governance. Under socialism private property was rare (it did exist), so access became much more important, and in postso-cialism, factions with access to state resources transformed into both political and economic elites. Once this happened, stabilization of formal institutions and differentiation in the direction of capitalist democracies was possible (if elites started to see independent law and open markets as beneficial – for example, when shady money was sufficiently laundered and recircu-lated). It is certainly not predictable, as the elite assessment can also be that continued access to state resources, including law, is the better route to serve themselves. Grasping elite assessments is never easy, and in many cases they will have an interest in keeping themselves partly invisible and keeping their use of formal-informal configurations largely invisible.

Some elite strategies to navigate (and reshape) institutional configu-rations can be called accommodations, self-imposed restrictions on profit and power maximization inspired by an assessment of the value of stabil-ity and- or shared interests. If one extrapolates this perception of shared interest, one comes to the concept of the common good. It is possible that, even in situations with elite rule, there are still groups (inside and outside the elites) and decision sites (in political niches, parts of the bureaucracy) where the common good can be envisioned, and interests balanced. Also here, starting points are important, and actors can have ambiguous atti-tudes. A president can be truly in favour of a neoliberal regime but feel outraged when he sees its negative impacts on his beloved capital.

Plans played a special role in socialist governance, and understanding the evolution of postsocialist governance is therefore also the understanding


of shifting roles of plans. Plans, as formal institutions, are always dependent on informality, for their emergence and implementation can be used or ignored by various actors, can reinforce elites, can create new actors and can be tools for policy integration and for envisioning a common good. This is never given a priori, and any proposed change in spatial governance that relies on plans ought to be inspired by an analysis of the embedding of plans in formal/informal configurations.

Institutional transformation and transparency/opacity

The previous analysis pointed out that the development of the pattern of informalities in spatial governance hinges on a series of parametric con-cepts. Causes and effects can be entangled here: if, for example, a site of decision making to envision the common good is lacking, this is likely to aggravate the undermining of formal institutions and therefore reduce societal differentiation, while conversely, dysfunctional formal institu-tions tend to erode sites of decision making where the common good is envisioned. If plans fail a few times, and planning was the main site for the coordination of decisions, the main site where the common good could be envisioned, then not only planning will be undermined as the place where coordination of spatial decisions takes place, but also the trust in the possibility of collectively working towards shared goals (cf. Eisenstadt, 1984; Greif, 2007). The same causal entanglement can be observed for the other concepts presented in the previous section.

In ever shifting situations, ever changing landscapes of power, opportunity and necessity, the function of informal institutions will change, and concomitantly their relation with formal institutions. What is complementary in one case will be corrupting or corrective in a different case (cf. Solnick, 1998; Allina-Pisano, 2008; Close, 2009), or in a different phase of governance evolution. For these reasons, we deem it less desirable to categorize informal institutions as either complementary, corrective or corrupting (as by Helmke and Levitsky, 2004).

What seems more important as a source of analytic distinction is the adaptiveness and flexibility of the sum of formal and informal institutions (cf. Easterly, 2006; Greif, 2007; Czarniawska, 2008). Problems in society arise


if neither formal nor informal institutions can articulate answers to emerg-ing needs or desires (Ellickson, 1991; Ledeneva, 2006; Allina-Pisano, 2008; Seabright, 2010). We argue that easy formalization of informality, and the easy making and breaking of formality, enhances such adaptive quality of the regime (cf. Mansfield, 1996; Easterly, 2006). Furthermore, the function-ing of the political system as an arena where the functioning of institutions can be discussed, and where new institutions can be made, can be considered the main prerequisite for a desirable balance between formal and informal institutions (Wilson, 2005; Whitehead, 2002; Van Assche and Salukvadze, 2012; Gel’man 2004). A different way of saying this is that a functioning political system has to observe continuously the distinction between formal and informal and shift it when deemed desirable (cf. Luhmann, 1990). We argue that transparency is a key feature of such functioning political sys-tems (Mansfield, 1996). Transparency then, ought to be a feature of politics, and politics ought to be considered the management of transparency in the configuration of formal and informal institutions. Whereas formality comes with visibility, with the obvious advantages of potential manipula-tion and improvement, informality can be more effective and efficient. But when opacity becomes too high, the relations between formal and informal become invisible and the enriching or corruptive effects of informalities become invisible as well. In the following paragraphs, we go back to our three cases and analyse the functions and management of transparency and opacity in the evolution of spatial governance.

A starting point of secrecy, anxiety and distrust is, maybe obviously, ominous for the further management of transparency and the fostering of trust that is essential in the functioning of formal institutions (Rose, 2008; Pusca, 2009; Gallina, 2010). The Romanian Danube delta is a case in point. In the Romanian delta, transparency was a scarce good already in the com-munist era. Maps were top secret and the same applied to plans. The use of the delta as open-air prison by the regime made the secrecy even thicker; implementation of the “complex plan” hinged on prisoners that officially did not exist (Van Assche et al., 2011a). Secrecy became a modus operandi for most local players. Some informal rules and positions were generally known, such as the informal power of shopkeepers and the role of farm-ers in inaccessible areas with less state control but, overall, the result of the stark combination of strict control and rigid institutions was dysfunc-tion and secrecy about both dysfunction and the few things that actually worked. Actors were so scared that they could not think independently at


all, and failed to see the opportunities and benefits of partial implemen-tation of the plans. Anxiety, silence and wide gaps between policy and reality often led to paralysis, non-implementation, or to implementation with unmonitored and disastrous results. A combination of opacity in all directions, anxiety and distrust in spatial governance tends to reinforce itself, as there are very few openings for reform, very few bases to built trust and explore alternative coordination options (Pusca, 2009; cf. Greif, 2007; Seabright, 2010; de Soto, 2000). After socialism, the strength of this path dependence can still be observed.

Another effect of opacity on spatial governance relates to policy integration. If spatial planning is policy integration (Van Assche and Djan-ibekov, 2012; cf. Andrusz et al., 1996), then this will fail if it is not clear what and who there is to integrate and if any resulting plans or policies can be implemented. In Tbilisi, opacity was so dense in the 1990s that it was usu-ally not clear which rules applied in which case, who the actors were and what their influence was supposed to be. Once shady capital was legalized, the owners could present themselves, could become visible in the games of politics and economy without fear of the law (Van Assche et al., 2012). The origins of capital and owners were forgotten, so the resources could be recirculated in the economy under new rules and could then contribute to economic development. The need for invisible (informal) coordination thus disappeared, and the owners of now legal capital could start to pres-sure for full implementation of the law, and stronger dominance of formal institutions, as that would protect their redefined interests. They could also start to look forward and cooperate with others (Heal, 1998).

Transparency and opacity are relative notions, notions with many shades and nuances. . Formal institutions are by definition visible, but informality can be invisible in infinite degrees. In Khorezm, the Soviet period saw, as mentioned, a substantial discrepancy between formal and informal institu-tions, but the overall quality of decision making was acceptable, and many services could be counted upon. What was hidden was in fact quite trans-parent. With exception of the fraudulent book keeping in cotton production (leading to Moscow’s action in the 1980s – Collins, 2006), most informal practices were known to the players, so modification of informal practices could be discussed, although in veiled terms. The relation between formal and informal was known, the limits of kolkhoz autonomy were known to the management and workers, and water, agro- and planning organizations knew where to assert influence or to leave it to local powers.


After Uzbek independence, both, necessity and the lure of increased clan power led to more direct intervention by the new centre. The relative opacity of the kolkhoz, of local government, was now seen as a threat. The subsequent abolition of the kolkhoz rendered local adaptation and policy integration a political and practical problem. Since necessity and tradi-tion brought local players to invent ever new escapes, the centre answered with ever new attempts to control. At the same time, that centre forced many organizations to relinquish their formal function in order to par-ticipate in cotton production (Shtaltovna et al., forthcoming). Thus, the real mandate of many government organizations became unclear. For the new class of farmers, the disappearance of the old silent pact also made things more opaque.

What increased the opacity of the game of spatial governance, and rendered that opacity harmful, was, in our view, a combination of several factors: the non-replacement of the silent pact that defined the old func-tions and boundaries of informality, the proliferation of new formal insti-tutions, aggravating the “paper” character of the whole set of formalities, and the unstable balance of powers at the regional level, increasing the unpredictability in the selective application of formal rules and the selec-tive acceptance of alternative coordination forms.

Summarizing and generalizing the argument thus far, we can say that pure visibility does not exist for informal institutions and that a full grasp of a formal/informal configuration is impossible, within an organi-zation and within societies at large. Just as informality cannot be avoided, opacity cannot be avoided. It is because of partial opacity that parallel institutions can exist, and it is because of it that institutional configu-rations (and individual institutions) have unpredictable effects, among which can be found new adaptations and solutions to problems. Con-versely, full transparency of decision making by the leadership carries disadvantages: a distance between rhetoric and practice might be nec-essary, not just for elite benefit but also to further the common good. Following Machiavelli (in the interpretation of Mansfield and Strauss), we can find the reason for this problem of transparency in the incon-sistency of public desires and the public lack of insights in the neces-sities of the strategic situation, and secondly in the strategic situation itself, where there are always adversaries, of factions and of the public interest. For all these reasons, because of benefits of opacity and risks of transparency, one cannot strive for exclusion of opacity, but only for a


prudent management of transparency/opacity. Such management ought to be informed by analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of trans-parency and opacity in a given situation – situations being defined as landscapes of necessity, risk and opportunity, requiring decisions that have to consider formal/informal configurations.

Referring back to our theoretical introduction, we can say that for-mal/informal configurations are undesirable when they do not deliver the goods, when they undermine the stability and differentiation of society, or when they reduce transformation options and hence adaptive capacity. Opacity, rendering the mapping of the configuration harder, can be con-sidered harmful when it contributes to either of these problems.

Certain forms of opacity in formal/informal configurations become harmful for society first and foremost when transformation options are restricted. If opacity is generally high, if there is no way for actors in spatial governance to figure out which rules will apply when, whom to deal with, and what is actually happening, then the development and stabilization of new coordination mechanisms becomes very hard. If opacity is delineated by means of a silent pact or otherwise, with the implication that certain details do not need to be visible or communicated openly (cf. Close, 2009), and the assumption that self-organization within sub-games will take place (cf. Ledeneva, 1998; Easterly, 2006; Greif, 2007), then it is still possible to maintain forms of productive competition, checks and balances and sites to envision the common good.

If, on the other hand, opacity creates too much uncertainty for actors to maintain interactions with others and develop long-term perspectives for themselves and the community in those interactions, then it should be considered harmful for society. In those situations, people tend to fall back on the family, on older social identities, and on short-term perspec-tives, while hiding assets (cf. Scott, 1985; Cashdan, 1990; Angelucci, 2009). This could be observed both in Khorezm and the Danube delta. And such coping strategies further increase the difficulties for reform because silence about the past, the present, and desirable futures becomes an asset for many. Silence about the present becomes more valuable than in the past and silence about the past is also useful, since revealing the past could reveal pathways to the present, and could reveal a different image of the past than the one used by the regime (cf. Van Assche et al., 2009; Oberkircher, 2011; Van Assche and Djanibekov, 2012).


Conclusion: Informality and the Management of Transparency in Transition

Just as democratic capitalism, socialism did not look and function the same in every place (Hough and Fainsod, 1979; French, 1995). The formal institutions of market and democracy gradually evolved out of a set of informal institutions (Greif, 2007; North, 2005; Seabright, 2010; Putnam, 1993), where certain forms of coordination, using certain rules and orga-nizations, certain roles of formality, turned out to be more efficient and/or desirable in a community (cf. Commons, 1924; Axelrod, 1986). The road from socialism to democracy can be expected to be many roads to many places (Elster et al., 1998; Rose, 2008), and the dialectics between formal and informal institutions can be expected to differ according to the ver-sion of socialism and democracy connected, and according to the stage of transformation. The experiences from 20 years of postsocialism clearly illustrate that simply imposing new formal institutions copied from some-where else does not work (cf. Burawoy, 2001; Allina-Pisano, 2008; Rose, 2008). Simply continuing the rule of old elites availing themselves of new institutions, does not work either (Gallina, 2010; Ledeneva, 2010).

It is also clear that democracy and capitalism cannot pull themselves out of the swampy informalities of collapsed regimes without making their hands dirty, without engaging them, in a difficult process of selection that requires judgment and leadership, not just following rules (cf. Platteau, 1994). Machiavelli was probably right in claiming that the origins of a sta-ble and law-abiding republic are usually in violence and blood (Mansfield, 1996). Many of the early recipes for transition forgot the evolution of formality in the West, the evolution of functional and organizational differentiation (de Soto, 2000; Seabright, 2010). They forgot the process of testing embodied in that evolution, testing in contexts of informal insti-tutions that cannot be fully reconstructed afterwards (cf. Luhmann, 1990, 1995, 2008). Thus the fit between formal and informal remains out of sight in the background of the imported recipe, and the fit between new formal-ity and existing informality is not considered (cf. Pejovic, 1999).

When considering the question of new formalization in transition, we therefore consider pragmatism the prime issue. Do the institutions work? Do they function as expected? Already, in this most basic of assessments, the embedding in culture, in informal institutions, has to be considered.


Formal institutions will bring different things in different contexts and what was expected from “democracy” or “capitalism” will differ (Rose, 2008; North et al., 2009). If models and examples of democracy share one feature, then it is the option to change the rules, and to change them after some form of public debate (Mansfield, 1996; Anderson, 1999; Van Ass-che et al., 2010). Even if the current configuration of formal and informal institutions seems to deliver the services considered most important, in an arrangement considered stable enough, that same reigning set of for-mal and informal can undermine it. In other words, of the three desirable features of formal/informal configurations mentioned, the maintenance of self-transformation mechanisms is the most fundamental one. Both systems theory and institutional economics align with this insight: if institutional evolution is continuous adaptation and stabilization of expec-tations in ever more communication settings, then absence of mechanisms that enable self-transformation while preserving differentiation equals gradual increase of friction between politics and its environments, and the ultimate collapse of the governance system (as the specific differentiation of law, politics and economy) that sustains capitalist democracies. Or, where capitalist democracy does not exist (and is considered a desirable goal), it is unlikely to materialize. Sustainable institutions are institutions that can transform themselves, and where trust and cooperation levels are such that long-term perspectives are possible and reasonable (Tyler, 1990; Heal, 1998; Kornai and Rose-Ackerman, 2004).

The management of visibility of informal institutions should therefore be considered of vital importance for any regime aspiring to be a democ-racy. While it is often impossible to label this or that institution as positive or negative, as complementary or undermining, it is important, we believe, to increase the scope of observation within the political system, and to reflect structurally on the ruling configurations of formal and informal. What should be assessed pragmatically and regularly is neither formal nor informal in isolation, but the current configuration of both. Prudence in politics includes resisting the urge to formalize everything and the urge to fear, condemn, or trample informal arrangements. This will only make them less visible and potentially more harmful.


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