How Informal Institutions Matter

Front matter

- VIDENCE [U Zeki Sarigil

Evidence from Turkish Social and Political Spheres

ZEKI SARIGIL

Contents

List of Figures ix List of Tables and Appendices xi Foreword: The Importance of Informal Institutions and Norms — xiii Acknowledgments xix 1 Introduction 1 2 Conceptual and Theoretical Framework 17

3 A Symbiotic Informal Institution: Religious Marriage in Turkey o 46

Appendix 3.A. A List of Interviewees (Religious Marriage) 76

Foreword

The Importance of Informal Institutions and Norms

Most people, whether scholars or ordinary citizens, might consider the term “informal institutions” to be an oxymoron. Institutions are formal entities like legislatures, or the bureaucracy, or the church, and they appear identified and defined by their formality—by being written on parchment as Zeki Sarigil describes them. These institutions have internal rules and incentives to control their members, as well as to interact with their environment. Those formal structures certainly do exist, and are extremely important in our social and political lives, but they may, however, be too formal to meet many of the challenges that the society and the economy present for would-be governors.

This incomplete nature of formal institutions then creates the opening for informal patterns of behavior to emerge as institutions. Constitutions may define the ways in which legislatures function, up to a point, but beyond that point informal rules and patterns become the dominant means of shaping behavior (Lauth 2000). Conversely, the completeness of some institutions, and the detail of their rules, may also assist in the emergence of informal institutions. Doing business with some bureaucracies may be perceived as being so difficult that informal institutions—bribery or clientelism—emerge to facilitate transactions (Kaufmann, Hooghiemstra, and Feeney 2018).

Informal institutions, however, must go beyond being simple, regular patterns of behavior. Two friends who meet every Tuesday morning for coffee have not created an institution. They may, however, be functioning within an informal institution such as reciprocity, especially if they are members of a broader social network, and they agree to take turns paying for the coffee. What is important here is whether there are norms at work

XİV FOREWORD that structure their behavior, or is it just convenience. Phillip Selznick (1992) argued that institutionalization involved “infusing a structure with values,” and in this rather simple case the regular pattern of behavior would need to be linked to some norms or values to be considered “institutional.” Drawing the line between the institutional and the noninstitutional is, however, not a simple task.

For the public sector, especially in the consolidated democracies, formal institutions are expected to do most of the work of governing. Law is the primary source of norms for behavior, and those laws are enforced by agents of the public sector. However, even in the most successful governments there are some things that the formal institutions may choose not to regulate, and will permit informal institutions to control behaviors. For example, governments may stand back from major segments of the economy such as professional sports and allow self-regulation and the market to shape outcomes.

We should also recognize that some degree of informality may exist at the margins of formal institutions. Institutions not only have to control the behaviors of members of the society but they must first control the behavior of their own members. This internal control is emphasized by the normative institutionalism more than by the other varieties of institutionalism. The utilization of myths, symbols, routines, and so forth at the heart of normative institutionalism (see March and Olsen 1989) is directed primarily at the members of the institution, rather than its clients or subjects. Other forms of institutionalism, for example, rational choice versions, assume these controls will be formalized, while other versions, for example, historical institutionalism, tend largely to ignore internal control.

The internal controls of institutions may work for most members, but may also fail when those institutional members are in frequent contact with nonmembers. Street-level bureaucrats, for example, are in regular contact with citizens, and may develop their own ways of dealing with those clients that vary markedly from the formal rules. The street-level bureaucrats may need to make alliances with their clients (Bardach and Kagan 2017) in order to be effective, or they may find that formal rules constrain their capacity to respond to the individual needs and circumstances of clients. Street-level bureaucrats may also use their own values, or the values of other institutions such as religion, to make decisions, rather than rely on those promoted by the formal institution. Further, those personal values may be

FOREWORD XV reinforced by those of their colleagues, leading to the creation of informal institutions at the bottom of formal institutions.’

Some important areas of political and social life are dominated by informal institutions. For example, although there are formal institutions such as the World Trade Organization, and some formalized network structures, much of international governance appears dominated by informal institutions. For example, a policy domain such as health may have formal institutions such as the World Health Organization, but it is also affected by the more general epistemic communities (Christensen 2021) of medicine and public health that will have fewer rules but perhaps even more influence over behaviors in the domain.

Both formal and informal institutions are mechanisms for solving collective action problems. If we begin with an assumption that individuals, and organizations, pursue self-interest, we can see that this individualistic pursuit often produces outcomes that are undesirable for the society as a whole. The “tragedy of the commons” is usually taken as the quintessential example when it produces the destruction of fishing stocks or the overuse of limited water supplies (Hardin 1968; Ostrom 1990). Other familiar examples include the “death spirals” that may occur in insurance markets with adverse selection and the risky behaviors that may occur when “moral hazard” prevails.

Much of the literature on collective action problems stresses the role of formal institutions, along with power and authority, in coping with collective action problems. Mancur Olson (1965; see also Mansbridge 2014), for example, argued that the only way to overcome problems of collective action was imposition. While formal institutions may work, they may also produce resentment from citizens and enhance distrust of government. Informal institutions can also be used to address collective action problems, especially when formal institutions lack legitimacy, or might be perceived as being too intrusive.

In summary, informal institutions and informal means of governance are important, and indeed necessary, adjuncts to the formal. The informal institutions provide means of getting institutions to work together, and for

1. The best example here may be of the informal norms that arise in police departments among the officers, and their mutual protection—a “blue wall” —against formal controls from above or from outside the police force (Conway and Westmarland 2021).

xvi FOREWORD getting individuals within institutions to work more effectively. A world without informal institutions would be more conflict-ridden and less effective than the world that does rely at least in part on the informal.

The Contributions of This Book

Zeki Sarigil’s book on informal institutions emphasizes the importance of these institutions and builds effectively on the preceding work in this field, especially that of Helmke and Levitsky (2004) and Lauth (2000). This is one of the very few extended treatments of the concept of informal institutions that exists in the social sciences, and the clear analysis of the topic adds a great deal to our collective understanding of these institutions and their role in the governance of societies.

Among several important contributions, perhaps the most important is extending the typology of informal institutions originally proposed by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. That typology had become the standard means of understanding informal institutions, and continues to be an excellent means of approaching informality in institutions. That said, however, Zeki Sarigil argues that the typology is to some extent incomplete, and the addition of an additional dimension will provide even richer understanding of informal institutions.

The important dimension that Sarigil adds to the study of informal institutions is legitimacy—the legitimacy of the formal structures engaged in governance. The Helmke and Levitsky typology tends to assume that the formal institutions being discussed are accepted as legitimate by the actors involved. If they are not, however, the behavior of the actors involved, as well as the relationships between formal and informal actors, can be expected to be different. This fundamental difference is closely related to the logic of normative institutionalism (March and Olsen 1989), with its emphasis on the role of values and trust within institutions, and between institutions and their environment.

In addition to developing the expanded typology of informal institutions, Sarigil demonstrates how it can be used, and the insights it provides that might be missed by a more constrained typology. A good deal of theorizing in institutionalism is done in a rather abstract manner, but this book shows clearly what an institutionalist perspective can bring to empirical research. He uses each of the four new cells of his expanded

FOREWORD xvii typology to examine one aspect of social and political life in Turkey. This research demonstrates that not only is the expanded typology a useful theoretical addition, it is also useful for uncovering the dynamics within social and political life.

Perhaps most important in this discussion and use of the concept of informal institutions is demonstrating the utility of the concept for dealing with issues that can confound the formal institutions of government. Questions of religion and ethnicity are difficult for governments to manage through formal, legal institutions no matter how fair they may attempt to be. Informality provides a way of coping with those issues and doing so ina manner that allows greater flexibility for all parties concerned.

The use of the typology on cases from Turkey is all the more impressive because it involves analyzing difficult issues involving religion and multiculturalism. These issues are difficult to resolve in most cases, and understanding them may require substantial cultural knowledge, but the informal institutional categories used do appear to work well in these analyses. They raise questions that assist the researcher in uncovering the dynamics of these cases. The cases become not only an exhibition of the utility of this approach to informal institutions, but of institutionalism more generally.

In conclusion, the apparent oxymoron of “informal institution” is anything but internally contradictory. Many patterns of behavior that are important for determining how individuals and societies perform their tasks do not meet standards of formality usually associated with institutions. This volume by Zeki Sarigil explores and elaborates the concept of informal institutions, and shows how it can contribute to understanding a variety of political phenomena. This should be the beginning of even more research using this concept.

B. Guy Peters University of Pittsburgh

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Since the start of this research project, I have received invaluable support and encouragement from many mentors, colleagues, friends, and academic organizations. First and foremost, I am very thankful to the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu) for its financial support. Thanks to the TÜBİTAK grant (No. 118K281), I was able to conduct extensive research on symbiotic informal institutions and collect original qualitative and quantitative data. I feel indebted to B. Guy Peters, whose works on institutional theory triggered, guided, and inspired my own thinking and research on institutions. I am also thankful to him for his continuous and generous scholarly support and encouragement at each stage of my career.

Iam grateful to many colleagues and friends including Yuen Yuen Ang, Eda Bektas, Levent Duman, Berk Esen, Jeff Haynes, Soeren J. Henn, Sabina Hilaiel, Lisel Hintz, Aida Just, Ekrem Karakoç, Özge Kemahlıoğlu, Elise Massicard, Burcu Ozdemir-Sarigil, Abel Polese, Aytuğ Şaşmaz, Pınar D. Sönmez, Kellee S. Tsai, and Gözde Yılmaz for their useful comments and suggestions on the initial versions of this study. I also wish to express my gratitude to the reviewers for the University of Michigan Press, who provided highly insightful and incisive comments and suggestions on book chapters.

The initial versions of this study were presented at various platforms, such as the Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2019 and April 2022; the Empirical Studies in Political Analysis Workshop, January 2020; POLS TALKS seminar series of the Department of Political Science, Bilkent University, February and October 2021; and the European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, September 2021. I would like to thank all those who participated in those presentations and shared their valuable questions, comments, and suggestions,

XX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS which helped me improve the book.

I also owe thanks to Tara Sylvestre for helping with editing the initial versions of the chapters. At the University of Michigan Press, I am thankful to Elizabeth Demers (editorial director) and Haley Winkle (editorial associate) for their support of this project and to Marcia D. LaBrenz (managing editor) and John Raymond (copy editor) for their assistance in preparing the final manuscript.

Finally, the endless support and encouragement of my family has been extremely helpful as I finish up the project.

Introduction

The behavioral approach, which was the dominant paradigm in several fields of social science during the first three decades of the post-World War II period, focused on “the actual, observable beliefs and behaviors of groups and individuals” (Thelen and Steinmo 1992, 4; see also Peters 1998, 2012, 2019; Immergut 2011; Scott 2014, 8-9). With such a focus, behavioralism viewed institutions as the aggregation of individual preferences and choices. In other words, the behavioral approach treated institutions as epiphenomenal (DiMaggio and Powell 1991, 2; Lowndes 2018, 54). As Peters (2012, 1) also notes, behavioral and rational choice perspectives assume that individuals act autonomously as individuals, based either on sociopsychological characteristics or rational calculation of their personal utility. In either theory, individuals were not seriously constrained by either formal or informal institutions, but would make their own choices; in both views preferences are exogenous to the political process.

Beginning in the early 1980s, however, institutional approaches and perspectives reemerged in the social sciences, including economics, sociology, and political science. Reacting to the behavioral approach, institutional approaches rediscovered institutions and emphasized “the role of institutions and institutionalization in the understanding of human actions within an organization, social order, or society” (March and Olsen 1998, 948; see also March and Olsen 1984, 1989; DiMaggio and Powell 1991).! In other words, institutional perspectives have emphasized that institutional structures do matter in sociopolitical life, meaning that institutional rules and

1. For useful reviews of the main premises and arguments of various institutionalist approaches, see Hall and Taylor 1996; Peters 2012, 2019; Scott 2014.

regulations substantially shape individual preferences and behaviors, and thus sociopolitical processes and outcomes (see also Peters 2019).

Although formal and informal institutions play major roles in the social and political spheres, earlier institutional analyses focused on formal institutions (or parchment institutions), ignoring or underestimating the role of informal institutional factors and mechanisms. The main research question those analyses raised was how formal institutional rules and regulations shape social, political, and economic behaviors, processes, and outcomes. Metaphorically speaking, by focusing on formal institutional arrangements, which are relatively more structured and visible than informal rules and regulations, earlier institutional studies pondered just the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise stated, these studies failed to shed light on the invisible (probably larger) part of the iceberg. As Helmke and Levitsky (2004, 725-26) also observe, informal rules have remained at the margins of the institutionalist turn in comparative politics. Indeed, much current literature assumes that actors’ incentives and expectations are shaped primarily, if not exclusively, by formal rules. Such a narrow focus can be problematic, for it risks missing much of what drives political behavior and can hinder efforts to explain important political phenomena.’

However, it is reassuring that subsequent institutional analyses have paid greater attention to the role of informal rules and mechanisms in sociopolitical life. The relatively recent institutional literature does acknowledge that informal rules and constraints are quite pervasive in the social and political spheres, profoundly molding social and political behaviors and processes in various settings.’ For instance, regarding the pervasiveness of informal constraints, North (1990, 36) states that “in our daily interac-

2. For similar observations, see Peters 1998; Carey 2000; Ingraham, Moynihan, and Andrews 2008; MacLean 2010; Radnitz 2011; K. Tsai 2016.

3. See, for instance, Pejovich 1999; Böröcz 2000; Lauth 2000, 2004, 2015; Wang 2000; Brinks 2003; T. Eisenstadt 2003; Farrel and Heritier 2003; Stacey and Rittberger 2003; Collins 2004; Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 2006; K. Tsai 2006, 2007, 2016; Bratton 2007; Hu 2007; Pop-Eleches 2007; Ingraham, Moynihan, and Andrews 2008; C. Williamson 2009; Casson, Giusta, and Kambhampati 2010; Grzymala-Busse 2010; MacLean 2010; Painter and Peters 2010; Radnitz 2011; Azari and Smith 2012; Christiansen and Neuhold 2012; Morris and Polese 2014; Waylen 2014; Xu and Yao 2015; Aliyev 2017; Ledeneva 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Peters 2019; and Polese 2021.

tion with others, whether within the family, in external social relations, or in business activities, the governing structure is overwhelmingly defined by codes of conduct, norms of behavior, and conventions [i.e., informal constraints].” Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 100) also emphasize the abundance of informal rules in political life by stating “as in all facets of society, ranging from family life to the operation of businesses and universities, unwritten rules loom large in politics.”

Many of those studies emphasize that even highly formalized institutional or organizational settings involve various informal rules and practices, exerting substantial influence on formal processes and outcomes (North 1990, 1993b; Knight 1992; Lauth 2000; Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 2006; Hu 2007; Ingraham, Moynihan, and Andrews 2008; Azari and Smith 2012; Peters 2019). For instance, North (1993b, 20) suggests that the effective working of formal institutions requires that formal rules “must be complemented by informal constraints (convictions, norms of behavior) that supplement them and reduce enforcement costs.” Similarly, Ingraham, Moynihan, and Andrews (2008, 68) assert that “informal rules... which are indeed harder to change, are usually in existence alongside formal rules, often ingrained in the values of organizations and societies.” Along the same lines, Knight (1992, 172) states, “informal rules are the foundation on which formal rules are built” Azari and Smith (2012, 36) also remark that formal institutions do not operate in a vacuum. Instead, they “coexist with a framework of unwritten or informal rules that structure collective expectations about how disputes will be resolved? Böröcz (2000, 352) also maintains that “much organizational life is necessarily informal, even amid clearly defined formal rules and regulations.” Finally, K. Tsai (2016, 279) highlights the coexistence of formal and informal institutions by using the analogy of a Mobius strip: “It would be more theoretically progressive to regard institutions as a single two-dimensional Mobius strip with both formal and informal components. . . . Informal and formal institutions are coterminous, as seen in the two sides of the Mobius strip.”

That being said, other than presenting some ad hoc generalizations and partial theoretical accounts, the existing theoretical literature on informal institutions does not really offer a comprehensive conceptual and theoretical framework of informal rules and regulations. In other words, despite increasing attention to the role of informal institutions in the social and political spheres, compared to formal institutions, informal institutions still remain an undertheorized issue in the existing institutional literature.

Moreover, it is striking that the existing theoretical institutional literature neglects the role of informal institutions in Muslim-majority contexts. However, given the abundance of strong and influential informal institutions in Muslim-majority countries (e.g., Turkey), such settings provide researchers valuable opportunities to gain novel insights into informal institutions. Hence, conducting further conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research on informal institutions in different settings would enhance our knowledge and understanding of the role of informal institutions in the sociopolitical world, and thus contribute to the progress of institutional theory. As Peters (2019, 217) recommends, “Bringing informal institutions into institutional theory enriches the theory and enables institutionalists to explain a wider pattern of behavior than would be possible using only formal structures.” Thus, this study focuses on the role of informal institutions in the social and political realms and provides in-depth analyses of several empirical cases of informal institutions as derived from the Turkish sociopolitical setting.

This study raises the following conceptual and theoretical research 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?

Definition of Key Terms

First, we need to define and clarify the key concepts that will be used throughout the book: institutions, formal institutions, and informal institutions. I am aware that there is no single definition of the notion of institution. As Moe (2005, 226) observes, “there is still no agreement on what an institution is. Some scholars see institutions as rules of the game, others see them as formal organizations, others as patterned behavior, still others as ‘myths’ and ideational structures.” My main motivation in this conceptual part, however, is not to present conceptual problems or challenges in the existing literature but to provide a working definition of the key concepts and notions, which is essential for further analysis.

To begin with the notion of institution, it is widely defined as a set of rules, norms, and procedures that structure and regulate social and political interactions and relations by constraining or enabling actors’ behavior, or doing both (see Hall 1986; North 1990; Knight 1992; Carey 2000; Helmke and Levitsky 2004; Levitsky and Murillo 2009; Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Scott 2014; Lauth 2015; Lowndes 2018).* Thus, as a set of rules and regulations devised and shared by human agents, institutions provide certain incentives or disincentives (material and ideational) for individuals, and thus, they prescribe or proscribe individual behavior.

Most institutions encompass the following three elements or pillars: regulative (regulating human behavior), normative (morally encouraging or forcing human agents to act in an “appropriate” way, as defined by institutional values and norms), and cultural-cognitive (shared and taken-forgranted conceptions, interpretations, meanings, frames, and schemas) (see Scott 2014). The salience of these elements might, however, differ within a particular institutional order and across different institutional settings.

One should also acknowledge that the strength of institutions might vary across space and time. In other words, some institutions might be relatively more powerful and effective than others. In addition, the power of a particular institution might increase or decrease across time. In the case of a powerful institution, the existing rules and regulations would be fairly stable and enforceable (i.e., complied with in practice) and the violation of those rules and regulations would result in punishment (Levitsky and

4. In terms of the distinction between an institution and an organization, many studies treat institutions as “the rules of the game” and organizations as “the players of that game” (see North 1990, 3-5; 1993a, 36; and 1998, 249; see also Khalil 1995; Levi 1997; Stacey and Rittberger 2003, 860; Helmke and Levitsky 2004; Lauth 2004; Heritier 2007, 5-6; Hu 2007; Mantzavinos 2011; Lowndes 2018, 61). Unlike institutions, organizations comprise groups of individuals with some common motivations and goals (Knight 1992, 3; North 2001, 16). Thus, as agential entities, organizations are collective actors (e.g., political parties, firms, trade unions, cooperatives, social clubs, and universities). It is, however, important to indicate that most organizational settings involve certain institutionalized rules, norms, and regulations. In other words, organizations are governed by certain rules and regulations (formal and informal) (Knight 1992; Scott 2014). Ellickson (1991, 31) calls those rules and regulations “organization rules”

Murillo 2009). Thus, an effective and powerful institution mainly involves shared expectations among relevant human agents, rule-driven behavioral regularities, and the mechanisms of enforcement and sanctions.

Formal institutions refer to the formally codified or inscribed rules, procedures, and regulations that are “created, communicated, and enforced through channels widely accepted as official” (e.g., electoral systems, constitutions, laws, treaties, party statutes, regulations, and contracts) (Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 727; K. Tsai 2006, 125; Lauth 2015, 57; Voigt 2018). Formal institutions are also referred to as parchment institutions (see Carey 2000).

Informal institutions, in a highly cited definition, are “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels” (Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 727; see also Lauth 2004, 69; L. Tsai 2007, 13). Similarly, Bratton (2007, 96) treats informal institutions as “unwritten codes embedded in everyday social practice” North (1990, 40) associates informal institutions with “(1) extensions, elaborations, and modifications of formal rules, (2) socially sanctioned norms of behavior, and (3) internally enforced standards of conduct” (see also Hu 2007, 22).

Helmke and Levitsky (2004) warn that informal institutions should not be conflated with informal behavioral regularities, such as fashions, trends, or routines. Treating informal institutions as rule-bound and rooted in shared expectations about other actors’ behavior, they note that “to be considered an informal institution, a behavioral regularity must respond to an established rule or guideline, the violation of which generates some kind of external sanction” (2004, 727; see also MacLean 2010; Azari and Smith 2012; Lauth 2015). Some examples of informal institutions from the social, political, and economic spheres are honor killing, blood feuds (vendetta), reciprocity, conventions, clientelism, bribery, corruption, nepotism, patrimonialism, patronage, customary law, consociationalism, diplomacy, networks (e.g., guanxi, wasta, blat, kinship, and hemşehrilik), the black market, and the informal economy.

Regarding the differences between informal and formal institutions, Stacey and Rittberger (2003, 861) state that “unlike the latter, the parties to informal institutions are not legally bound to their rules; in terms of enforcement, aggrieved parties can only rely on political sanctions that carry negligible legal force. In contrast, the rules of formal institutions are legally enforceable by a third-party judicial body... which possesses the authority to issue binding legal sanctions.” For C. Williamson (2009, 372), the key difference between the two is that whereas formal constraints are centrally designed and enforced, informal institutions are self-enforced. Treating formal institutions as “structured” and informal institutions as “unstructured,” Shepsle (2006, 28-29) suggests that unstructured institutions are “more amorphous and implicit rather than formalized” They “emerge informally and often are not actually written down as formal rules; they simply come to be known as ‘the way things are done around here” On the distinction between formal and informal institutions, Grzymala-Busse (2006, 6) warns that informal institutions are more than behavioral regularities or unintentional byproducts of formal institutions. They are not simply clashing, weak, or absent formal institutions. Moreover, even without formal enforcement mechanisms, they can be imposed by informal means such as ostracism or shunning. Finally, like formal institutions, informal institutions can be either weakly or strongly influential, and effectively or ineffectively enforced. Their informality does not presuppose either their extent or their impact.

In the light of all these conceptualizations and treatments, table 1.1 provides a brief comparison of formal and informal institutions on various dimensions.

TABLE 1.1. A Comparison of Formal and Informal Institutions

Formal Coordinating Source of Enforcement Codification Center Legitimacy Enforcer Mechanisms Formal

Formal Yes State authority, State agencies, Legal, official codification (de law public

jure); more authorities, civil

structured and servants, courts

visible

Informal

No formal In some cases Social, communal Society, Social (e.g., codification (de (social community, naming and facto); more acceptance and social groups, shaming, amorphous; less approval) networks ostracism, visible condemning)

Source: Adopted from Lauth (2015, 58) with some modifications.

8 HOW INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS MATTER Methodological Approach

To answer the above conceptual and theoretical research questions, this study examines the role of informal institutions in various social and political domains of the Turkish setting. The Turkish case constitutes a quite valuable theory-building case for couple of reasons. First, informal institutions have been quite abundant and influential in the Turkish sociopolitical world. As several existing institutional analyses claim, formal institutions suffer from a limited degree of effectiveness, especially in the developing world (e.g., see O'Donnell 1994; Starn 1999; Collins 2004; Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 2006; Hydén 2006; K. Tsai 2006; Van Cott 2006; Bratton 2007; Xu and Yao 2015). For instance, Levitsky and Murillo (2009, 116) observe that “many formal institutions in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the former Soviet Union are neither minimally stable nor regularly enforced. In other words, instead of taking root and generating shared behavioral expectations, formal rules are widely contested, routinely violated, and frequently changed? As one might expect, the weakness of formal bodies and institutions is likely to motivate agents to resort to informal rules and mechanisms (e.g., see Helmke and Levitsky 2006; Van Cott 2006; MacLean 2010; Xu and Yao 2015; Aliyev 2017). This suggests that when inscribed formal institutions remain weak, unwritten rules and regulations might hold more sway.

This observation is particularly valid for Turkey. One can find several examples from the social and political domains in the Turkish context suggesting that formal rules and regulations have been frequently circumvented, ignored, or sometimes openly violated. For instance, constitutional law scholars argue that violations of the constitution and the principle of the rule of law have been common in Turkish political culture (e.g., see Ozbudun 2015). One emblematic case is that during the First Gulf War (August 1990- February 1991), President Turgut Özal (1927-93), who was eager to get Turkey involved in the war on the side of the US-led coalition forces (without the approval of the parliament), stated “it is not a problem to violate the Constitution once" (Özen 2013, 83). Süleyman Demirel (1924-2015) made similar remarks. Responding to claims about the presence and illegal activities of the informal deep state (derin devlet) in Turkey, President Demirel stated (in February 2000) that "sometimes, the state might take action deviating from its routine operation and practice” Assuming that the term "routine" in his statement refers to the existing formal rules, regulations, and practices, Demirel’s statement can be interpreted as a confession of the presence of informal politics at the state level.”