doi:10.1017/S1049096519000131 © American Political Science Association, 2019 PS • July 2019 485 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ PROFESSION SYMPOSIUM Informal Institutions and Survey Research in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Matthew F. Cancian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kristin E. Fabbe, Harvard Business School ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ A re informal institutions obstacles for research- ers to overcome, or can they be enablers for research—as well as important subjects to be studied in and of themselves? State and formal institutions loom large, in both the discipline of political science and the research processes that political scientists use to generate empirical data. In many contexts, however, formal state structures may be overshadowed or dominated by informal institutions that operate within infor- mal organizations, including strong tribal and/or clientelist networks. Although informal institutions are hardly unique to the Middle East—indeed, they are innate to social organiza- tion in almost any setting—their strength relative to the state, especially in conflict zones and disputed territories, means that researchers working in these areas must be cognizant of how they function. For social scientists used to interacting primarily with for- mal state institutions, it may be tempting to deem informal institutions—that is, unwritten social rules and norms that primarily operate within informal organizations—as obstacles. Informal institutions often are inscrutable to outsiders; their very existence—not to mention their structure and significance— might not be known to people who are unfamiliar with the context. Moreover, informal institutions operate differently than the rules of Weberian bureaucracies. When informal insti- tutions are strong, the identity of someone making a request can matter as much as the request being made. Researchers might have all of the necessary forms in order only to find that their request for permission never is processed. They then meet someone who has no formal authority yet is able to open doors believed to be permanently blocked. Reflecting on our joint experiences of conducting two very different surveys in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI)—one with female small-business owners in 2014 and the other with soldiers in 2017—we argue that informal institutions present a potential obstacle to scholars who ignore them. However, they offer an opportunity to those who make the effort and investment required to understand them, and they remain a valuable topic of investigation in their own right. After a sig- nificant period of mutual confidence building, researchers can tap into these networks of informal organizations to facilitate quantitative research that illuminates our understanding of social and political dynamics. In doing so, researchers also are likely to learn much about the nature of informal institutions and how they might best be studied, using either qualitative or quantitative analysis. Our work in this context has taught us that scholars can and should embrace informal institutions in several ways. First, acquiring knowledge about informal institutions and the organi- zations in which they are embedded is integral to devising rele- vant research questions. Without this knowledge, scholars are at risk of asking uninteresting questions, falling into the increas- ingly common trap of what we call “using sophisticated methods to state the obvious.” They also risk designing experiments and/ or surveys that fall short of the goal or fail completely. Second, scholars who understand informal institutions can better identify and reach the appropriate population for their intended study. Third, they should avoid relying on one set of informal institutions, organizations, or patrons; instead, they need to know when to plug into which informal networks. Fourth, when chosen appropriately, local collaborators embed- ded in informal institutions and organizations can provide social incentives, thereby encouraging local research teams to work diligently and to not defect from agreements. WORKING AT THE INTERSECTION OF FORMAL AND INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS We follow Helmke and Levitsky’s (2004, 727) definition of informal institutions as “socially shared rules, usually unwrit- ten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels.” Critical to this defini- tion is the distinction between informal institutions and the informal organizations or networks within which they often operate. North (1990, 4) made this point early in his book: “Conceptually, what must be clearly differentiated are the rules from the players.” For example, a tribe is not an informal institution, but the expectation of mutual trust that operates among members of a tribal network is an informal institu- tional norm that holds that informal organization together. It also is important to distinguish these informal institutional norms from the cultural values that generate them. Again, our thinking follows North (1990), who saw the informal institu- tions generated by culture as critical to overcoming coordina- tion problems. These informal institutions, therefore, are not the values themselves but rather the shared expectations of behavior—or norms—that they produce.