This work addresses the political attitudes and participation of informal sector workers in Mexico. Conventional wisdom leads to the expectation that informal sector workers would have lower levels of system-supportive political attitudes and lower levels of political participation. This article, using data from 514 surveys conducted in Mexico in 1997, examines the relationship between informal sector employment and system-supportive political attitudes and participation by comparing informal and formal sector workers. Analysis here shows that for those attitudes and forms of participation in which informal sector workers differ, they are likely to have more supportive attitudes toward the state and to participate in politics at a higher level than their formal sector counterparts.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aguilar, Edwin Eloy. (1991). Does informality matter for political behavior: An analysis of employment and voting in El Salvador. Unpublished master's thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2.
Aguilar, Edwin Eloy. (1995). El sindicato nos tiene con vida aquí [The union has kept us alive]: Urban informal labor, occupational organization, and political behavior in Costa Rica. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
3.
Aguilar, Edwin Eloy , Pacek, Alexander, & Thornton, Douglas S. (1998). Political attitudes and participation among informal sector workers in Costa Rica and Mexico. Paper presented at the 21st Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL.
4.
Aguilar, Edwin Eloy , & Thornton, Douglas S. (1995). Demand making behavior among urban informal workers: The case of Costa Rica. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Social Science Association, Dallas, TX.
5.
Aguilar, Edwin Eloy , & Thornton, Douglas S. (1996). Informal sector workers participate politically but how and why? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
6.
Almond, Gabriel A. , & Verba, Sidney. (1965). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Boston: Little, Brown.
7.
Babb, Florence E. (1989). Between field and cooking pot: The political economy of market women in Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press.
8.
Balch, George I. (1974). Multiple indicators in survey research: The concept “sense of political efficacy.”Political Methodology, 1(2), 1-43.
9.
Brady, Henry E. , Verba, Sidney, & Schlozman, Kay Lehman. (1995). Beyond SES: A resource model of political participation. American Political Science Review, 89, 271-294.
10.
Bromley, Ray . (1994). Informality, de Soto style: From concept to policy. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (pp. 131-151). Albany: State University of New York Press.
11.
Cameron, Maxwell A. (1991). The politics of the urban informal sector in Peru: Populism, class, and “redistributive combines.”Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 16(31), 79-103.
12.
Cameron, Maxwell A. (1992). Micro and macro logics of political conflict: The informal sector and institutional change in Peru and Mexico. In Archibald R. M. Ritter, Maxwell A. Cameron, & David H. Pollock (Ed.), Latin America to the year 2000: Reactivating growth, improving equity, sustaining democracy (pp. 209-220). New York: Praeger.
13.
Camp, Roderic A. (1996). Politics in Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press.
14.
Castells, Manuel , & Portes, Alejandro. (1989). World underneath: The origins, dynamics, and effects of the informal economy. In Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, & Lauren A. Benton (Eds.), The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less developed countries (pp. 11-37). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
15.
Coleman, Kenneth M. (1976). Diffuse support in Mexico. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
16.
Coleman, Kenneth M. (1992). Political evaluation, workforce organization and the informally employed in democratic Costa Rica: Results from a pilot study. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Social Science Association, Austin, TX.
17.
Coleman, Kenneth M. , & Davis, Charles L. (1988). Politics and culture in Mexico. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
18.
Comisión Econónomica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) . (1997). The equality gap. CEPAL NEWS, 17(4), 1-3.
19.
Craig, Ann L. , & Cornelius, Wayne. (1980). Political culture in Mexico: Continuities and revisionist interpretations. In Gabriel A. Almond & Sidney Verba (Ed.), The civic culture revisited (pp. 325-393). Boston: Little, Brown.
20.
Craig, Stephen C. , & Maggiotto, Michael A. (1982). Measuring political efficacy. Political Methodology, 8(3), 85-109.
21.
Cross, John C. (1998). Informal politics: Street vendors and the state in Mexico City. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
22.
Dalton, Russell J. (1988). Citizen politics in Western Democracies: Public opinion and political parties in the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and France. Chatham, UK: Chatham House.
23.
Davis, Charles L. (1989). Working-class mobilization and political control: Venezuela and Mexico. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
24.
Davis, Charles L. , & Coleman, Kenneth M. (1975). Political symbols, political efficacy and diffuse support of the Mexican political system. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 3, 27-42.
25.
De Oliveira, Orlandina , & Roberts, Bryan. (1994). The many roles of the informal sector in development: Evidence from urban labor market research, 1940-1989. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (pp. 51-71). Albany: State University of New York Press.
26.
De Soto, Hernando . (1989). The other path: The invisible revolution in the third world. New York: Harper and Row.
27.
Diamond, Larry . (1992). Introduction: Civil society and the struggle for democracy. In Larry Diamond (Ed.), The democratic revolution: Struggles for freedom and pluralism in the developing world (pp. 1-27). London: Freedom House.
28.
Domínguez, Jorge I. , & McCann, James A. (1996). Democratizing Mexico: Public opinion and electoral choices. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
29.
Easton, David . (1965). A framework for political analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
30.
Franks, Jeffrey R. (1994). Macroeconomic policy and the informal sector. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (pp. 91-112). Albany: State University of New York Press.
31.
Gamson, William . (1968). Power and discontent. Belmont, CA: Dorsey.
32.
Grindle, Merilee S. (1996). Challenging the state: Crisis and innovation in Latin America and Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.
33.
Grossman, Gregory . (1989). Informal personal income and outlays of the Soviet urban population. In Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, & Lauren A. Benton (Eds.), The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less developed countries (pp. 150-170). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
34.
Hart, Keith . (1973). Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 61-89.
35.
Liedholm, Carl . (1994). The impact of government policies on microenterprise development: Conclusions from empirical studies. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (pp. 75-89). Albany: State University of New York Press.
36.
Moser, Caroline O. N. (1994). The informal sector debate, Part 1: 1970-1983. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (pp. 11-29). Albany: State University of New York Press.
37.
Pérez Sáinz, Juan Pablo . (1996). Neoinformalidad en Centroamérica [Neoinformality in Central America]. San José, Costa Rica: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales—Programa Costa Rica.
38.
Portes, Alejandro . (1994). When more can be less: Labor standards, development, and the informal economy. In Cathy A. Rakowski (Ed.), Contrapunto: The informal sector debate in Latin America (113-129). Albany: State University of New York Press.
39.
Portes, Alejandro , Blitzer, Silvia, & Curtis, John. (1986). The urban informal sector in Uruguay: Its internal structure, characteristics, and effects. World Development, 14, 727-741.
40.
Putnam, Robert D. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
41.
Raczynski, Dagmar . (1977). El sector informal urbano: Controversias e interrogantes [The urban informal sector: Controversies and questions]. Santiago, Chile: Corporación de Investigaciones Económicas para Latinoámerica.
42.
Rosas, Ana Maria . (1997, March 31). Son “inflados los criterios laborales usados por INEGI [Labor criterion used by INEGI are inflated]. El Universal, pp. 1, 26.
43.
Sanyal, Bishwapriya . (1991). Organizing the self-employed: The politics of the urban informal sector. International Labour Review, 130, 39-56.
44.
Sassen-Koob, Saskia . (1989). New York City's informal economy. In Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, & Lauren A. Benton (Eds.), The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less developed countries (pp. 60-77). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
45.
Seligson, Mitchell . (1983). On the measurement of diffuse support: Some support from Mexico. Social Science Indicators Research, 12, 1-24.
46.
Speer, John G. (1992). Political judgments and informal employment in Managua. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Social Science Association, Austin, TX.
47.
Thornton, Douglas S. (1997). [Data collected in Mexico regarding the association between informal sector employment and system-supportive attitudes]. Unpublished raw data.
48.
Tokman, Victor E. (1989). Policies for a heterogeneous informal sector in Latin America. World Development, 17, 1067-1076.
