2
The point of departure for this paper is the conviction that the study of politics and
political economy must be designed around specific problems rather than around intellectual
movements reflecting competing epistemological postulates, and that many of the interesting
problems encountered in the developing world will require not uniform models of human
behavior but comparative analyses of variation in the evolution, organization, and
interconnectedness of different components of institutional life. In view of the intellectual
atmosphere accompanying the then-prevalent theoretical project of “modernization” -- a
discourse that downplayed the significance of agency in “social systems” and dismissed
preexisting normative orientations as fleeting remnants of a disappearing “traditional society” --
Popkin and Scott may be forgiven for engaging in simplifications in order to challenge the
dominant discourse in defending the alternative logics they invoked to explain the behavior they
observed. At present, however, there is far too much at stake in the current debates over
“globalization” to permit similar kinds of simplifications to go unchallenged. Some questions
may inherently require universal constructs to capture whatever common forces are shaping
individual and collective behavior across regions. However, for those seeking to critically
examine the interaction between local histories and the seemingly inexorable, supposedly
homogenizing forces identified with globalization, it will be necessary to examine the past in
more nuanced terms, paying particular attention to how variations in preeexisting social
institutions can be reproduced in the form of informal structures in newer environments,
affecting the coherence, efficacy and legitimacy of relevant formal institutions.
Therein lies the value of the analytic scheme devised by Hyden in his examination of “the
economy of affection” as it functions in different types of informal institutions.
3
While Scott’s
emphasis on a shared “ethic” of subsistence implicitly points to the kind of interpersonal
relationship that is at the core of the economy of affection, Hyden’s approach represents a
significant step beyond the debate over the “moral” and “rational” peasant because it relies not
on a priori assumptions of human behavior but on standardized constructs through which we can
systematically compare the ways in which different forms of rationality and different principles
of morality may be matched with each other across institutional contexts. Distinguishing
between closed and open informal institutions and between those organized around vertical and
lateral interpersonal ties, Hyden generates four ideal-typical types of informal institutions that he
3
Goran Hyden, “The Economy of Affection: Informal Institutions and Development” (ms, n.d.)
Convention