Religious Culture as Informal Governance in Public Schools: Rethinking Normativity, Institutional Neutrality, and Everyday Regulation

Purpose: This study aims to examine how religious culture operates as a form of informal governance within public school institutions. Rather than treating religiosity as a pedagogical or moral variable, the article reframes religious culture as a normative system that structures behavior, authority, and compliance in everyday institutional life. The study interrogates how such informal norms interact with the principle of institutional neutrality that formally characterizes public education. Method: The research adopts a qualitative socio-legal approach, combining document analysis, institutional observations, and semi-structured interviews with school administrators, teachers, and students. Data are analyzed through thematic coding informed by theories of normativity, informal regulation, and legal pluralism. This approach allows the study to trace how cultural norms are translated into routine practices without being codified as formal rules. Findings: The findings reveal that religious culture functions as an effective regulatory mechanism that shapes conduct, expectations, and disciplinary practices within public schools. Although these norms lack formal legal status, they operate with a high degree of compliance and moral authority. The study identifies a dynamic tension between formal claims of neutrality and the everyday enforcement of religiously informed norms, demonstrating how informal governance fills regulatory gaps left by formal law. Significance: This study contributes to socio-legal scholarship by expanding the understanding of governance beyond formal legal frameworks. It highlights how culture-based normativity operates as a parallel regulatory system in public institutions, offering a nuanced perspective on law–culture interaction. The findings are significant for debates on legal pluralism, institutional neutrality, and the regulation of everyday life in multicultural societies.