Practici informale nocive sau inofensive?: "În pofida" și "dincolo de" stat; cazul Ungariei și României

Abstract

Recent debates on informality have challenged the pertinence of the traditional legal-illegal dichotomy for understanding social actions. Located in a grey continuous area, informal practices are based on individuals' perception on the role of the state in a given sector and results from illegal, legal and extra-legal transactions. This paper is an attempt to bring further this debate by proposing a new conceptualization of informality rooted in empirical evidence: we distinguish between informality "in spite" of the state in order to designate practices that overrule state instructions and try to re-regulate areas already regulated by the state; and informality "beyond" the state, defined as a set of practices and informal rules that arrange an area unregulated or deserted by the state. Our theoretical argument is illustrated by two case studies, one devoted to informal child-care in Romania (informality beyond the state) and the other to corruption in Hungary (informality in spite of the state).