Rule of law or Rule of Norms? Informal Institutions and their Role for Democratic Resilience
Informal institutions shape regimes, elite decision making and citizen behaviour. The state — in the formal sense — would not work if informal institutions did not exist. Compared to formal institutions, such as parliaments, parties, elections or constitutions, informal institutions are not coded in writing. Nevertheless, constitutions, party charters, party manifestos and electoral rules are not alone in structuring people’s behaviour. Individuals perpetuate unofficial widely known patterns that also organise behaviour. But what is the role of informal institutions in upholding or challenging the rule of law? Identifying them and their effects on the liberal-legal order turns out to be a complicated task that requires interdisciplinary analysis. Lawyers and political scientists investigate informality in complementary ways, tracking with different measures how formal institutions can be transformative in the process of democratization. Surprisingly though, interdisciplinary collaboration on such issues is rare. The aim of my collaboration with the re:constitution network is to confront previous research outcomes on the effects of informal institutions in creating democratic regimes in new EU democracies with the views of colleagues in the legal practice who trace the creation and manipulation of formal institutions from a different point of view. By bringing political scientists and law researchers at the European University Institute in a joint project with rule of law promoters at the Helsinki Committee in Budapest, we can add a new layer of depth into the ongoing comparative research into elite behavior and commitment to formal democratic institutions in the countries of East – Central Europe.