Alena Ledeneva
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Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project (in-formality.com). She graduated from Novosibirsk state university (1986) and Cambridge University (PhD, Newnham 1996). She authored Russia's Economy of Favours (1998), How Russia Really Works (2006), Can Russia Modernize? (2013) and edited three volumes of The Global Encyclopedia of Informality (UCL Press 2018). She led international research teams and provided expertise to the EU, DFID and British Academy funded projects on themes of corruption and informal governance. Her books have become must-read sources in Russian studies and social sciences.
In June 2024, she joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Informality, corruption, informal governance, Russian studies.
Informality: 50 years on
The project delves into the findings of three volumes of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality to continue to advance the central themes of the informality studies – human cooperation vs. human competition, local knowledge vs. global conjunctions, context-sensitive comparisons vs. context-free patterns of informality. The journey into societies’ open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices focuses on informal problem-solving, or know-how, which all insiders tend to use without sharing it with outsiders.
The paper will address both theoretical and empirical challenges of the informality studies. Theoretically, it points to the centrality of the informal, which remains the key feature of human experience, even if fluid, invisible and resistant to articulation. Empirically, the paper will rely on the network-based expertise emerging from the collective effort of contributors to the three volumes – itself a solution to the problem of compartmentalisation of knowledge and the extinction of polymaths.
International experts in economics, social psychology, anthropology, urban planning, architecture, sociology, political science and young scholars alike join forces in addressing global challenges and capturing the complexity of contemporary societies around the world. The main argument of the proposed interdisciplianry paper is the need to re-evaluate the potential of the informal cooperation in human life, which reduces the social and cultural complexity, and helps dealing with uncertainty and divisiveness of societies in the context of digital, demographic and ecological challenges.
Key publications
Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity. Volumes 1-2. UCL Press. 2018; Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Informal Problem Solving Around the Globe. Volume 3. UCL Press, 2024.
Minbaeva, D., Ledeneva, A., Muratbekova-Touron, M. and Horak, S., 2023. Explaining the persistence of informal institutions: The role of informal networks. Academy of Management Review, 48(3), pp.556-574.
Ledeneva, A.V., 1998. Russia's economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge University Press.
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