Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

Abstract

Contemporary writing on North African borderlands invokes the idea of a general, unregulated porosity through which small-scale informal traders of food or textiles move alongside drug smugglers and terrorists. I challenge that conception, demonstrating that the vast majority of smuggling activity is in fact highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs, quantity, and types of goods that can pass through certain nodes, typically segmenting licit from illicit goods.While informal, the institutions regulating this trade are largely impersonal and contain third-party enforcement, hence providing a direct empirical challenge to common characterisations of informal institutions in political science. I argue that revisiting the characteristics associated with informal institutions, and understanding them as contingent on their political environment, can provide a new starting point for studying institutions, the politics of informality, state capacity, and the regulation of illegal economies.

Contested borders: organized crime, governance, and bordering practices in Colombia-Venezuela borderlands

“…Thus, an irregular immigrant pays a fixed toll for crossing while a truck with licit goods trade illegally, such as medicines or chemical supplies, pays a different one. This scheme of prices matches findings reported in other contexts where informal institutions display differential regulatory nodes according to the type of good (licit/illicit) smuggled (Gallien 2019 ). As in any other market, prices react to changes in demand.…”

“…In short, the relationship between OCGs and borderlands should not be taken for granted as traditional national security approaches suggest. Bordering practices in the context of illicitness shape local economies and institutions considered rightful by locals (Gallien 2019 ; Rolandsen 2019 ).…”

“…Licit and illicit practices coexist and are imbricated in manifold ways. More so, illicit practices are often part of the processes of state-making and border control (Abraham and Van Schendel 2005 ; Goodhand 2013 ; Gallien 2019 ).…”

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling

“…Other studies of smuggling presented modes of organization built along clan, ethnic, or tribal linkages that were central to successful involvement in illicit cross-border trade. Studies by Gallien (2019), Chouvy (2013), Olken and Baron (2009), and examined the distinct and efficient modes of organization that fitted the nature of the activity being undertaken. For example, traders engaged in the transport of benign products had their own social network and distinguished themselves from the 'truly unlawful' and 'highly illegal' elements of the cross-border trade engaged in kidnap for ransom, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and illicit weapons.…”

“…Officials too can allow tacitly some forms of smuggling, turning a blind eye to cross-border commerce as long as specific norms and unofficial rules are adhered to by smugglers (Herbert, 2019;Gallien, 2019). This is often based upon the rationalization that the risks of destabilization and protests in the borderlands substantially exceed the dangers posed by low level smuggling (Hanlon and Herbert, 2015).…”