Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa
Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa
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DOI：
10.1017/s1537592719001026
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发表时间：
2020-06-01
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Gallien, Max
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Gallien, Max
当代关于北非边境的著作援引了普遍存在的、不受管制的孔隙度的概念，小规模的非正规食品或纺织品贸易商与毒品走私者和恐怖分子一起通过这种孔隙度流动。我质疑这一概念，证明绝大多数走私活动实际上是通过一个密集的非正式机构网络进行高度监管的，这些机构决定了可以通过某些节点的货物的成本，数量和类型，通常将合法货物与非法货物分开。虽然是非正式的，但规范这种贸易的制度在很大程度上是非个人的，并包含第三方的执行，因此对政治学中非正式制度的共同特征提出了直接的经验挑战。我认为，重新审视与非正式制度相关的特征，并将其理解为取决于政治环境，可以为研究制度、非正式政治、国家能力和非法经济的监管提供一个新的起点。
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.