Change for the Better happens outside the formal System: A Feminist Perspective on Informality in the Western Balkans’ EU Enlargement

This paper explores the multiple meanings and functions of “informal practices” and “informal institutions” in the context of efforts to gender European enlargement; that is, to develop a gender-inclusive approach to EU-driven system transformation in the Western Balkans. The argument begins from the contradictory understandings of informality in the region and seeks to reconcile them through a feminist institutionalist lens. In the process of European enlargement, hence the admission of new members to the European Union following an ambitious reform agenda, criteria relating to gender equality are formally embedded in accession requirements. However, after years of EU-incentivized reform, progress toward gender equality and inclusive democracy remains limited. Across the region, women’s rights and the position of gender advocates are deteriorating, alongside the rise of anti-gender movements and their alliances with ruling elites. The state of democracy and gender equality are closely intertwined. Gender advocates in the Western Balkans both value the EU’s normative ambition and lament its limited enforcement capacity. This tension inspires a feminist exploration of the institutional dimensions of (democratic) change. Feminist institutionalism provides a useful framework to understand both the advancement and the backlash of gender policy in candidate states; particularly through attention to informal practices, norms, and cultures that shape culture and political outcomes. These informal factors help explain why, for instance, anti-rights movements often mobilize more effectively than women’s rights advocates. Understanding informality, therefore, becomes central to feminist analyses of European enlargement. Yet within EU (enlargement) studies, “informal practices” are typically discussed as obstacles to reform synonymous with corruption, clientelism, or weak rule of law. This dominant framing renders informality a negative concept, leaving little room for its potentially productive aspects. The resulting interdisciplinary miscommunication hinders the development of a more nuanced and productive feminist argument.