How Informal Institutions Matter: Evidence from Turkish Social and Political Spheres

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How Informal Institutions Matter: Evidence from Turkish Social and Political Spheres

by Zeki Sarigil

University of Michigan Press, 2023

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-0-472-07638-3

Paper: 978-0-472-05638-5

eISBN: 978-0-472-90377-1 (OA)

About the Book

In How Informal Institutions Matter, Zeki Sarigil examines the role of informal institutions in sociopolitical life and addresses the following questions: Why and how do informal institutions emerge? To ask this differently, why do agents still create or resort to informal institutions despite the presence of formal institutional rules and regulations? How do informal institutions matter? What roles do they play in sociopolitical life? How can we classify informal institutions? What novel types of informal institutions can we identify and explain? How do informal institutions interact with formal institutions? How do they shape formal institutional rules, mechanisms, and outcomes? Finally, how do existing informal institutions change? What factors might trigger informal institutional change? In order to answer these questions, Sarigil examines several empirical cases of informal institution as derived from various issue areas in the Turkish sociopolitical context (i.e., civil law, conflict resolution, minority rights, and local governance) and from multiple levels (i.e., national and local).

About the Author

Zeki Sarigil is Associate Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University.

Reviews

“Sarigil successfully builds upon the existing theories of informal institutions, incorporating the important dynamic of social and cultural legitimacy, and weaving this formulation together with vivid and informative examples from the Turkish case. In so doing, he also contributes richly to our understanding of minority communities in Turkey.”
—Michael Wuthrich, University of Kansas

— Michael Wuthrich

“This book proposes new categories of informal institutions, based on integrating the dimension of legitimacy of formal institutions, and therefore expanding previous existing categories. This is original, stimulating, groundbreaking work.”
—Elise Massicard, Sciences Po

— Elise Massicard

“From a leading political scientist on Turkey, this book makes a welcome intervention into studies of how informal rules and understandings shape political behavior outside of formal governance institutions. Zeki Sarigil's analysis is theoretically innovative and empirically rich, unpacking the power of the ‘unwritten’ in sociopolitical life with important insights for Turkey scholars and beyond.”
—Lisel Hintz, Johns Hopkins University

— Lisel Hintz