INFORM London Inaugural Workshop

We are pleased to invite you to join the London Inaugural Workshop , at UCL SSEES, London, on Friday 30th September for the research project INFORM, “Closing the gap between formal and informal institutions in the Balkans.”

The project involves a consortium of 40 researchers at 9 institutions in 9 countries. It is funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, coordinated by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, and is set to run between 2016 and 2019. General information about the project can be found on the website, and of course we are able to provide additional information.

Southeast Europe has seen a century of continuous transformation and “transition” – the disappearance and emergence of states, political and legal systems, ideologies, institutions, and social classes. This has been accompanied by a stability of social practices resistant to change. Shaken by radically changing ideological and legal structures, citizens rely on customary and informal social networks of kin, symbolic kin, and friends for meeting economic needs, and on clan- or kin-related structures rather than the rule of law for security and protection. We trace the persistence of informal practices to: 1) the external origin of major transformations, including the “transitions” to and from socialism; 2) the incomplete character of change, which has tended to be replaced by equally radical but diametrically opposed projects; 3) the development of a buffer culture based on informal practices, directed to enabling people to survive under unstable conditions; and 4) the widening gap between formal institutions and informal social practices.

The distance between proclaimed goals and existing practices represents the key challenge to the European integration of Balkan societies. The integration process could end with superficial change, behind which the ""real"" social life of corruption, clientelism, tension, inequality, and exclusion will continue to unfold. We propose to explicate the key formal and informal “rules of the game”, and to identify and decipher the ""unwritten rules"" which underpin tactical manoeuvring between formal and informal institutions, in various spheres and at various levels of social life. These would then be compared to the demands and recommendations laid out in the key EU documents outlining expectations from Southeast European states. The goal is to contribute to the formulation of policy recommendations which would aim not to eradicate informal practices, but to close the gap between formal and informal institutions in Balkan societies.

View the event programme here.

Sponsoring institution: European Commission Horizon 2020 Research Programme. Details here. 

Participant institutions: University College London (UK), Institut za Etnologiju I Folkloristiku (Croatia), University of Maribor (Slovenia), Center for Intradisciplinary Applied Social Research (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Center for Emprical Cultural Studies of Southeast Europe (Serbia), Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” Skopje (Macedonia), Qendra e Kerkimive Historike dhe Antropologjike (Albania), Social Research Kosovo (Kosovo), Rigas Stradina Universitate (Latvia)

Registration is free but we kindly ask you to confirm your attendance here: