Symbiotic relationships among formal and informal institutions: Comparing five Brazilian cultural ecosystems

This paper draws on ecology to advance insights on the relationships between formal and informal institutions. We are interested in observing change in such relationships in different cultural contexts. Extending the research traditions of institutional complementarities and of institutional analysis inspired by biology, we focus on symbiotic relationships to understand interdependence patterns between formal and informal institutions. We compare five Brazilian macroregions, which have experienced different historical processes. We treat each region as a different “cultural ecosystem” within which institutional symbiotic relationships unfold. Building on correlation network analysis, we compute networks of multiple and contemporaneous symbiotic relationships for each macroregion. Our results suggest that formal institutions tend to be “symbionts,” which are more “dependent” on informal institutions acting as “hosts” within asymmetric symbiotic relationships. Our comparison shows that asymmetry between formal and informal institutions is more evident in cultural ecosystems in which institutions have traditionally been more extractive, such as in the northern Brazilian macroregions. In cultural ecosystems with historically more inclusive processes, formal institutions have greater tendency to become a nurturing ground for other institutions, confirming Pritchett’s (2013) argument that successful formal institutions are consolidations/formalizations of a successful societal struggle.