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204 9 INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT The historic past into which the new tradition is inser ted need not be lengthy, str etching back into the assumed mists of time . . . In short, they [invented traditions] ar e responses to novel situations which take the for m of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligator y repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to str ucture at least some par ts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the “invention of tradition” so interesting for historians. —Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (1983: 2) What makes the ‘ulama of the modern world wor th studying is not merely that they have continued to lay claim to and self-consciously represent a millennium-old tradition of Islamic learning, however . Their larger claim on our attention lies in the ways in which they have mobilized this tradition to def ne issues of r eligious identity and authority in the public spher e and to ar ticulate changing r oles for themselves in contemporar y Muslim politics. The ‘ulama’s tradition is not a mer e inheritance from the past, even though they often argue that that is pr ecisely what it is. It is a tradition that has had to be constantly imagined, r econstructed, ar gued over, defended, and modif ed. —Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam (2002: 10) In his seminal work on institutions and institutional change, North (1990) called for a further study of informal institutions. He noted that they were as important, if not more so, than formal institutions in shaping development outcomes, but remained little understood. Two decades later, an increasing number of publications verifies the importance of informal institutions in shaping social, economic, and political outcomes (Helmke and Steven 2004; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] 2007). However, INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT 2 05 an empirically grounded analysis identifying and explaining “the mechanisms through which informal institutions arise and are maintained” is still missing (Williamson 2000: 597). In this book I have sought to redress this gap. Drawing on empirical evidence on the workings of Islam, as represented through the choices and decisions of actors within the madrasas of Pakistan, I have helped us understand the working of informal institutions and have thus sought to demonstrate the strength of the NIE analytical framework (along with its limitations) in explaining a noneconomic institution. In the process, I have demonstrated the adjustments that need to be made to the core assumptions of the classical rational choice theory if this is, as argued by some of its proponents (Becker 1993; Coleman 1990), to act as a unifying framework across the social sciences. As I weave together the arguments from previous chapters, an appropriate entry point is to recall the three central puzzles regarding the behavior of the religious actor presented in the introductory chapter,raised by the armed resistance staged by the ‘ulama and students at the Red Mosque in Islamabad. First, why does a religious actor develop irrational preferences, which apparentlylimithisorherownwell -being?Thebookhasrecountedmanysuchinstances, namely, the preference of the ‘ulama of the Red Mosque for centuries-old Shari‘a law over the present-day civil law designed to match the demands of modernity (chapter 8); the parental decision to send their children to a madrasa instead of secular schools or making them join the labor force (chapter 5); and many Muslim women’s choice to abide by the Islamic code of conduct, which feminist thinking would suggest severely limits their well-being (chapter 6). Second, why would religious actors undertake flawed means-end calculations,for example the decision to engage in battles they are bound to lose based on religious belief? For instance, the Red Mosque‘ulama decided to take on the Pakistani state although it was clear that they had no means with which to do so.Arguably, the same perceived irrationality marks the decision of the Al-Qaida leaders to combat the United States,when they are unable to match its military strength. Third, what leads to a change in a given preference? For example, why did the ‘ulama and students at the Red Mosque move from observing routine religious rituals to staging a radical resistance in the name of Islam? Why, from a position of leading the latest scientific inquiries in earlier centuries, has the Islam of today moved to being the center...

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