An understanding of middlemen and their social significance helps draw out parallels to
a host of other mediating institutions that are critical parts of many societies. They range
from marriage brokers, or systems of reciprocity like guanxi in Chinese societies [18, 48,
59], and blat in the USSR and Russia [31], at the traditional and informal end of a
continuum, to lobbyists, lawyers, and corporate “fixers” at the more institutionalized end (it
is interesting to note, in that regard, that many Indian middlemen now refer to themselves as
consultants). While those diverse institutions are by no means alike, they are ways of
making connections and getting things done that reduce transaction costs and ease the
uncertainties and risk inherent in dealing with others. They are complex, involving (even in
more formalized settings) important social skills and issues of power, status, and etiquette.
Thus, while middlemen and other such operators clearly embody a departure from
contemporary ideals of rational decision making they can be deeply embedded in a
society’s values, hierarchies, and customs. That some of their dealings are illicit may say
less about “how corrupt” a society is than about the ways it defines roles, relationships, and
acceptable interactions in that difficult terrain where state and society intersect.