Informal governance presents a compelling conundrum arising from the clash between legal and social norms and the increasing complexity of contexts. The case of kompromat reveals a complex interplay between the private and public spheres, and points to a wider range of informal tools that emerge or are upcycled to navigate the grey areas of decision making and problem solving. In the age of social media, big data and generative AI, the distinction between the private and the public becomes even more blurred and complex. As a concept, informal governance is often associated with corruption and the weakness or degeneration of formal institutions. Historically, however, informal governance has preceded formalisation. Its potential to solve problems in complex contexts is the purpose of articulating its modes and modelling informal governance (Baez Camargo and Ledeneva 2017). I will present the findings from the Global Informality Project (in-formality.com) on practices of cooptation, control and camouflage, published in the second volume of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality (UCL Press, 2018).
