Stokes 2006

Do Informal Rules Make Democracy Work? Accounting for Accountability in Argentina" Susan C. Stokes 125-139

in editors Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky 2006. Informal institutions and democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• likens some informal rules of democracy to language rules, where we learn to follow them before we learn what they actually are  (125)
• two central premises of the chapter:
• the way people vote in elections is rule-governed, and individuals rules for making voting decisions should be taken seriously (126)
• voters decision rules are grammatical: they are known and diffused through social mechanisms and rarely discussed openly, but are still not violated
• informal institutions and rules do not just describe what people do, but also what the expect other people to do (128)
• In Argentina, author suggests, democratic institutions are weak (128-129)
• Argentine democracy actually functions better in places where informal rules enforce accountability (129)
• people in places where democracy works pretty well display a heightened appreciation for mechanism of accountability AND expect others to follow decision-rules that make accountability possible (mar del Plata)
• in clientelisitic areas, people expect others to vote in ways that support clientelism (BA, Córdoba, Misiones)
• uses survey evidence
• "Expectations of accountability, when they do occur in Argentina, focus both on formal institutions and on informal rules and behaviors." (131, emphasis added)
• in places where democracy works, voters vote on whether a politician was accountable and expect others to do the same (132)
• none of this comes from any inherent belief (in Mar del Plata) that people are more trustworthy (135) or because they think perpetrators will be caught (136) but because they think people will lose support, voters, whatever if they aren't accountable (136-137)
• Authors hunch: beliefs in accountability are both a cause and a consequence of well-functioning democracy (138-139)
• 
  

Helmke and Levitsky 2006

 Introduction, Helmke and Levitsky, 1-30

editors Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky 2006. Informal institutions and democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• lots of literature, the "unrule of law" scholars, question the extent to which focus on "parchment" rules of law actually misses important on-the ground realities (1)
• "informal rules shape how democratic institutions work" (2)
• some informal rules compete with and subverts democracy (dedazo in Mexico), others can complement and help sustain them (Chilean Concertacion) (3)
• informal institutions definition: socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels (5)
• they must be enfored in some fashion (5)
• four distinctions: informal institutions should be distinguished from (6)
• weak institutions
• other informal behavioral irregularities: a patterned behavior must be accompanied by a rule and social sanction (if not done) for it to be an informal institution
• informal organizations (7): separate rules from players
• culture. these are not culture, though it can at times be hard to tell them apart
• why informal rules matter: (8) (can be good and/or bad)
• Political representation can be affected in both directions
• programmatic links can be broken
• sometimes looks like the tradeoff in clientelism
• democratic accountability (9):
• vertical accountability (citizens can punish officials), and
• horizontal (officials are responsible to other agencies, officials)
• informal rules can provide more accountability, but it might not provide the right type of public accountability (10-11)
• democratic governance
• informal rules of accommodation, power-sharing, and coalition building can prevent intractability problems (11)
• at times these may improve governance and stability, but not democracy
• citizenship and the rule of law
• brown areas = places where citizens do not actually possess the rights they should, especially indigenous (12)
• informal institutions can both violate and advance citizenship rights in areas not fully controlled by the state
• typology (13)
• two dimensions:
• degree of convergence between informal and formal institutions
• effectiveness of relevant formal institutions
• page 14:

	Effective formal institutions	Ineffective formal institutions
Convergent	Complementary	Substitutive
Divergent	Accommodating	Competing

• some final points on this typology
• Substitutive may be able to achieve things that formal rule fail to (17)
• same informal rules may be in different box depending on the formal institutions discussed
• the relationship between formal/informal institutions is dynamic, both can cause decay and/or institutionalization of the other, can cause stability or instability in formal rules