Workshop Institutional Voids and the Governance of Developing Economies

A common problem faced by many developing countries is the presence of institutional voids. While it is an established wisdom that institutions matter in development, most developing economies are characterized by the absence of much-needed institutional arrangements to regulate market exchange, mobilize economic resources, and coordinate social activities. Such institutional voids are sometimes filled by unconventional actors/organizations that, in the process of negotiating rules, resources, and discourses with formal and informal circuits of power, contribute to the emergence of alternative forms of governance. This symposium seeks to explore the phenomenon of institutional voids and to locate the actors, sources of entrepreneurial agency, nature of government-business relations, structure of social order, and wider socio-political context conducive to new forms of governance that fill those institutional voids.

Date: 16 May 2011

Place: Rotterdam