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GIGA Journal Family

The GIGA journal family brings together the five refereed area journals published by GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies:
Afrika Spectrum • China aktuell – Journal of Current Chinese Affairs • Japan aktuell – Journal of Current Japanese Affairs • Lateinamerika Analysen • Südostasien aktuell – Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs.

As part of GIGA's commitment to comparative area studies the following joint call for papers enables scholars to explore an issue of global importance from different regional perspectives, while fully inserting their findings into the broader comparative and cross-area debate.

Joint Call for Papers: Informal Institutions

In recent years economics, political science and sociology have seen a vigorous debate on the role of informal institutions. Understood to encompass various sorts of stable, durable and often complex rules, behavioural practices and relational patterns which are not legally or administratively codified or controlled; informal institutions can function as parallel structures in economy, politics and society which constitute the underpinning of the social fabric of every society. However, their role is often ambiguous. Informal institutions can advance developmental goals, but they can also be counterproductive, as the emerging networks of ‘modern mafias’, obstructing good governance and accountability even in some industrialized countries, demonstrate. On the other hand, deficiencies in state building in developing nations may derive rather from an ill-adapted system of formal institutions than from the dominance of informality. Especially in regions with different paths to ‘modernity’ than in the ‘West’, informal institutions can be of greater importance to the actors concerned than formal ones. In order to understand how political, economic and social systems as well as actors operate in practice, we need more empirically grounded and theoretically innovative research on informal institutions. Against this background we call for papers analyzing one or more of the following with a regional focus on Africa, Latin America, China, Japan or South-East Asia:

• The historical dimension of the emergence and development of informal institutions in the economies, polities and societies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America;

• the complementary, substitutive or conflictive relationship between formal and informal institutions;

• empirical and normative aspects of the implications of informal institutions, e.g. in terms of efficiency and legitimacy, conflict resolution, etc.;

• forms and mechanisms through which changes in formal institutional contexts (legislation, electoral systems etc.) affect existing informal institutions and vice versa;

• comparative studies, from paired comparisons to large N studies;

• new methodological approaches and/or innovative theoretical conceptualizations.

We also welcome contributions on related issues, provided that they combine the main topic of "informal institutions" with the regional focus of the GIGA journal family.
Papers can be submitted to or to the individual journals.

Deadline for submission is July 31, 2007.

For more information on the journals and instructions for article submission see:
www.giga-hamburg.de/giga-journal-family.

View 2nd Joint Call for Papers as pdf file.