Shattering the illusion: state-imposed informality and ambivalent accountability in postcolonial governance

Purpose This study examines how, during the COVID-19 crisis, the Sri Lankan state embedded informality within formal welfare structures to produce accountability through ambiguity. It theorizes state-imposed informality as a postcolonial governance strategy that shifts responsibility downward while retaining top-down controls. Design/methodology/approach Using a subaltern perspective and reflexive interpretive methodology, the study investigates a cash transfer program through 29 interviews with beneficiaries and state actors across local to national levels. It draws on theories of postcolonial accountability, strategic informality, and subaltern agency. Findings The study reveals how austerity, political interests, and institutional constraints produced an ambiguous governance regime. Formal mechanisms were selectively mobilised while informality was embedded to manage crisis demands. Public officers and beneficiaries, though marginalised, negotiated, adapted to, and resisted this regime through moral judgement and relationality. Originality/value The paper conceptualises state-imposed informality as an ethically charged mode of postcolonial crisis governance and reframes public accountability as relational, contested, and shaped from below. It contributes to critical accounting and postcolonial governance by highlighting how accountability is not only displaced but also reconstituted through subaltern practice.