Clans, Cliques, and Captured States: Rethinking 'Transition' in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Informal social networks, Corruption, Social capital, Economies in transition

Informal Relations and Institutional Change: How Eastern European Cliques and States Mutually Respond

In the 1990s, there has been widespread talk in eastern Europe of "clans," "Mafia," and other informal groups and networks. People in the region use these terms to describe groups that wield influence and run things. When used in the West, however, these terms often connote criminality in the form of high-profile activities such as money laundering, capital flight, and trafficking in drugs, weaponry, and prostitutes. Western observers often fail to appreciate the relationships that underpin these activities; informal groups and networks not only enable the activities but also can shape the development of the state. Further, most clans are not criminal, at least not to this extent, and the fact that the same terms mean quite different things fosters Western misconceptions of eastern Europe. The assumption underlying many "transition" studies-that Western models of institutional change are directly applicable-further impairs understanding of the role of eastern European informal groups and networks. Models employed to explain institutional change are often inadequate because they fail to appreciate the role of informal relationships, their historical foundations, and their ability to shape the nature of the state. Conventional vocabularies from comparative politics, public administration, and sociology appear insufficient to probe changing state-private and political-administrative relations in complex administrative states. During precarious moments of legal, administrative, political, and economic transformation, old systems of social relations, such as the informal groups and networks that functioned under communism and helped to ensure stability, can be broken up. These informal systems also can be crucial supports for, or obstacles to, the development of new types of institutions. Informal relationships may be as likely to shape and circumvent state and other formal institutions as the latter are likely to reorganize or overcome the former. The impetus for this paper comes as a response to attempts by a few anthropologists and socialists of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to characterize informal groups and networks so that their roles in shaping markets and institutions might be more readil