Lecture 5: Culture and history Flashcards
Definition: informal institutions
Socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels; fluid and local
How does enforcement of formal institution depend on informal institutions:
You enforce the good rules (e.g. professional norms regarding corruption), but ignore bad rules (e.g. not firing a teacher who is one minute late)
How do the norms differ in Indian regions Himachal Pradesch and Uttarkhand?
Himachal Pradesch: deliberative norms: policies are adapted to local context, you listen to local teachers and parents (e.g. allowing Mother Teacher Associations to run schools)
Uttarkhand: legalistic norms: following the letter of the law, ignoring the messy challenges in reality (e.g. banning MTAs because they broke rules on timing of classes)
How social norms undermine or support development can vary according to
Informal institutions
How does citizens’ compliance with formal institutional rules depend on informal institutions?
Affects whether citizens perceive a social contract with the government, and whether there is social judgment for evading formal institutions (e.g. in Southern Italy, social norms indicate that it’s okay to evade taxes)
Which informal institution matters a lot for public health actions?
Trust (in government, experts etc.)
Definition: culture
A stable, coherent set of identities, beliefs, and informal institutions in a society
Definition: Modernization theory
Development is accompanied by a necessary shift in values, beliefs, and social norms
What are the 5 variables that change as a country becomes modern, according to the modernization theory?
- Affective -> neutral
- Diffuse roles -> specific roles (one role per person)
- Particularistic -> universal
- Ascritive (based on identities from birth) -> meritocratic
- Collective -> individualist decision-making
3 objections to modernization theory and that culture determines development
- ‘Modern’ culture is subjective, and there is no single modern culture; Tradition can be harnessed for development (Japan, Rwanda)
- Culture is too ‘broad’ a concept; specific informal institutions matter, but they are not limited to one specific culture
- Reverse causation: culture is a product of institutions and development, not its cause (formal rules signal what is acceptable, poverty and bad governance makes people untrusting and skeptical)
Natural experiment at UN: do cultures persist if we change the socioeconomic and institutional context?
Without institutional rules (diplomatic immunity), UN diplomats brought own norms about paying fines to New York
But with institutional rules everyone paid their fines
Traditional institutions can be important for development because
They are the foundation of key informal institutions like trust, conflict mediation, and community identity
Where do institutions and the relationship between state and society originally come from
History
Why was there a reversal of fortunes in the Americas since 1500?
Before colonizers either set up extractive economic institutions when they found natural resources and could exploit the local population
Or inclusive institutions where they settled and had to produce their own crops (less dense population -> harder to enslave people, to get people to stop running away, they got land and voting rights)
Definition: path dependency (and 3 points)
The ‘lock-in’ of initial choices that limits future changes due to:
1. Informal institutions and culture adapting
2. Inclusive institutions gain legitimacy and support
3. Extractive institutions concentrate power and wealth, prevenitng change
