Gordy, Eric and Ledeneva, Alena and Cveticanin, Predrag (Eds). (2025) Captured Societies in Southeast Europe: Networks of Trust and Control. Critical Approaches to Southeast Europe: A Cross-Disciplinary Series. Amsterdam University Press & CEU Press: Amsterdam,The Netherlands.

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Abstract

In Southeast Europe, there is a growing disjunction between “the way the world is” and the world that is described by law. The informal practices that address problems when formal institutions fail can be celebrated as spaces of creative problem-solving, or criticized as spaces for favouritism and corruption. When ruling political parties control informal networks, they consolidate the hold of unaccountable actors on power, moving from state capture to societal capture. This book presents findings from a collaborative, multidisciplinary research project. Over three years, a group of forty researchers examined informal practices in nine Southeast European states, adopting a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. This close look at the Balkans illuminates persistent deficits in state legitimacy and capacity. The evidence allows a critical assessment of “Europeanisation” processes that produce only superficial formal changes, and of ways that networks of mutual assistance turn into instruments of social control and closure.

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