Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Br J Sociol. 2023 Jan;74(1):70-82. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12984. Epub 2022 Nov 7.
Institutions regulate social life through formal rules and sanctions. These are distinguished from another source of social regulation, the informal incentives and constraints inherent in cultural currents and customary practices. Informal practices may be based not simply on cultural forces, though, but expectations regularised by informal rules and sanctions, which may operate as informal institutions. One approach holds that informal institutions arise out of formal institutional voids. Another holds that informal institutions operate in response to situations in which formal institutions frustrate the interests of individuals and groups who engage informal institutions to augment, compromise, or subvert formal institutions. After developing the concept of informal institution, the article goes on to indicate how an informal relationship pervasive in modern China, guanxi, may be understood as an informal institution. It is shown that by drawing on the case of guanxi the scope of the concept informal institution can be extended and also that our understanding of guanxi is enriched when the concept of informal institution is applied to its analysis.
制度通过正式规则和制裁来规范社会生活。这些规则和制裁与社会规范的另一个来源不同，即文化潮流和习惯做法中固有的非正式激励和约束。非正式惯例可能不仅仅基于文化力量，而是基于非正式规则和制裁所规定的期望，这些规则和制裁可以作为非正式制度发挥作用。一种观点认为，非正式制度是从正式制度的空白中产生的。另一种观点认为，非正式制度是在正式制度阻碍个人和群体利益的情况下运作的，这些个人和群体利用非正式制度来增加、妥协或颠覆正式制度。在提出非正式制度的概念之后，本文接着指出，在中国现代普遍存在的非正式关系——关系，可以被理解为一种非正式制度。通过援引关系的案例，可以扩展非正式制度概念的范围，并且在将非正式制度概念应用于关系的分析时，可以丰富我们对关系的理解。
