ABSTRACT
Is extreme authoritarianism a conducive environment for the consolidation of informal political practices? How can we explain the emergence of ‘infra-state politics’ (Fukui 2000: 9) in political landscapes where the state is the only meaningful actor? In addressing these questions, this chapter intends to contribute to the debates on the crystallization of informal politics in modern neo-patrimonial systems (Kim 2000; Guliyev 2005; Collins 2006; Ilkhamov 2007).
