Kate Meagher

TL;DR: In this paper, a structuralist "informalization" approach is proposed, which regards the expansion of informal activity as part of the restructuring strategy of the formal sector in the face of economic recession.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that the problem of African development lies in bad cultural institutions by showing that informal economic governance in Nigeria is shaped, not just by culture, but by the disruptive effects of rapid liberalization, state decline and political capture Identity Economics traces the rise of two dynamic informal enterprise clusters in Nigeria, and explores their slide into trajectories of Pentecostalism, poverty and violent vigilantism.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the essentialism and cultural determinism of'social capitalist' perspectives have seriously distorted the contemporary understanding of African informal economies and focus on more institutionally sensitive network perspectives that focus on how the economic performance of networks is shaped by their specific institutional content as well as by the nature of their linkages with the wider society and the state.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the recent revalorization of non-state forms of order and authority in the context of hybrid approaches to governance and state building in Africa, and argue for a more empirical and comparative approach to hybrid governance that is capable of distinguishing between constructive and corrosive forms of nonstate order, and sharpens rather than blurs the relationship between formal and informal regulation.

TL;DR: In this paper, the role of social networks in the economic organization of two dynamic informal enterprise clusters in the town of Aba in south-eastern Nigeria, an area renowned for the density of its popular economic networks and for the rapid development of small-scale manufacturing under Nigeria's structural adjustment programme.