Reciprocity, Mutuality, and Shared Expectations: The Role of Informal Institutions in Social Protection in Africa

Abstract

Contemporary research in institutional analysis shows that institutions, broadly defined to include rules, policy, laws, conventions, shared expectations, and repeated practices, are instrumental in shaping human behaviour. This insight raises questions for understanding the dynamics of social care and protection in African countries where formal and informal institutions interact and compete in an environment characterized by two publics. Analytically, African countries reflect the notions of modern state, however due to their inability to connect with majority of the population informal rules practices that derived their logic of appropriateness and legitimacy from familial and kinship relationships have become essential institutional rules that mediate interaction and social exchange in social protection and beyond. The overbearing influence of informal institutional practices is however often ignored in the scholarly analysis of development and policies in the region, and this is due partly to a narrow focus on formal institutional reforms and a penchant for perceiving informality as deviant behaviour. This paper discusses the interface between informal institutions and social protection in Africa and draws attention to the role such institutions play in shaping the incentive structures and choices of political actors and citizens as well as the implications of informality in sub-Saharan African countries for broader socio-economic transformation.