This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. Gaming the system: strategies of camouflage. The notion does not, however, lend itself to a simple definition, as is shown by the complexity and richness of the material contained in this chapter. In my introduction, I offer some reflections on the degrees of complexity of the informal practices described here; on family resemblances across the practices of different countries; on the importance of symmetry between formal rules and informal norms, and, since the period that followed the end of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe offers so many rich examples of gaming the system, on the effects of post-communist social change.
A system can be gamed with widely varying degrees of elaboration. Parking your car in a disabled parking space barely qualifies as gaming the system, even if you get away with it. You have secured the advantage of a parking place by breaking a formal rule; that is all.
That is akin to simple fare-dodging. A cartoon by Alex Daily Telegraph illustrates a particularly sophisticated variation on the theme of insider trading see insider trading in USA, 6. A city trader thanks a financial analyst for his share tips, which are invariably wrong. The gratitude is double-edged. By basing some of his trades on those tips, the trader can keep his overall performance down to a level at which it does not arouse suspicion.
The rest of his trades are based on inside information. In gaming the system, complexity can vary a great deal. Blat in Romanian usage can refer to something as straightforward and innocent as hitching a ride, through fare-dodging on public transport to giving and taking bribes.
Intermediary in exchanges of favour see economies of favours in Chapter 1 may simply help the speeding up of a bureaucratic procedure or it can be used to protect students from extortion of informal payments by instructors and teachers.
