At 50% of the global workforce, informal workers constitute a large, diffuse, and resource-poor group with high barriers to collective action. Contrary to scholars’ expectations, informal workers organize to varying degrees in most countries, and states often encourage them to do so. Why do some informal workers organize while others do not? I argue that states can intervene in informal workers’ collective action decisions: As enforcement costs increase, states may pay informal workers to organize, and then bargain with the resulting organization over self-regulation. I present a game theoretic model of state intervention in collective action and illustrate it with original ethnographic, survey, and interview evidence from street markets in La Paz, Bolivia. I suggest that informal workers interact strategically with states and conclude with implications for formalization policies.
AgarwalaR. (2013). Informal labor, formal politics, and dignified discontent in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2.
AuyeroJ. (2001). Poor people’s politics: Peronist survival networks and the legacy of Evita. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
3.
AxelrodR. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York, NY: Basic Books.
4.
BellC.WolfordS. (2015). Oil discoveries, shifting power, and civil conflict. International Studies Quarterly, 59, 517-530.
5.
BhowmikS. (2012). Street vendors in the global urban economy. New Delhi: Taylor & Francis.
6.
BlofieldM. (2012). Care work and class: Domestic workers’ struggle for equal rights in Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
7.
ClarkeK. A.PrimoD. M. (2012). A model discipline: Political science and the logic of representations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
8.
ColumbaJ. L. (2015). Se abre una pugna entre 2 sectores de gremiales alteños [A rift opens between two El Alto street vendor sectors]. La Razón.
9.
CrossJ. C. (1998). Informal politics: Street vendors and the state in Mexico City. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
10.
CruzC.QuerubinP.LabonneJ. (2014). Networks structure and electoral outcomes (Working paper). Paper presented at the American Political Science Association meeting in 2014. Evidence from the Philippines.
11.
DanglB. (2007). The price of fire: Resource wars and social movements in Bolivia. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
12.
de La PazG. A. M. (2015). Comerciantes en vías públicas [Merchants on public streets].
13.
de SotoH. (1989). The other path: The invisible revolution in the Third World. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
14.
DibbitsI.BeltránE. P.VolggerR. (1986). Polleras Libertarias: Federación Obrera Femenina, 1927-1964 (Vol. 9) [Skirts of Liberation: The Women Workers Federation, 1927-1964 (Vol. 9)]. La Paz, Bolivia: Taller de Historia y Participación de la Mujer.
15.
DuneierM.CarterO. (1999). Sidewalk. New York, NY: Macmillan.
16.
EfflerE. S. (2010). Laughing saints and righteous heroes: Emotional rhythms in social movement groups. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
17.
FischerE.QaimM. (2012). Linking smallholders to markets: Determinants and impacts of farmer collective action in Kenya. World Development, 40, 1255-1268.
18.
GoldsteinD. M. (2016). Owners of the sidewalk: Security and survival in the informal city. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
19.
GoodfellowT. (2015). Taming the rogue sector: Studying state effectiveness in Africa through informal transport politics. Comparative Politics, 47, 127-147.
20.
GoodwinJ. (2001). No other way out: State and revolutionary movements, 1945-1991. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
21.
GowanT. (2010). Hobos, hustlers, and backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco. London, England: University of Minnesota Press.
22.
GrossmanG.BaldassarriD. (2012). The impact of elections on cooperation: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda. American Journal of Political Science, 56, 964-985.
23.
Guha-KhasnobisB.KanburR.OstromE. (2007). Linking the formal and informal economy: Concepts and policies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
24.
GurrT. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
25.
HardinR. (1982). Collective action. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
26.
HollandA. (2014). Forbearance as redistribution: Enforcement politics in Urban Latin America (Doctorial thesis). Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
27.
HollandA. (2015). The distributive politics of enforcement. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 357-371.
28.
HollandA. (2016). Forbearance. American Political Science Review, 110 (2), 232-246.
29.
Hondagneu-SoteloP. (2001). Domestica: Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
30.
HummelC. (2016). Vendedores populares y políticas de representación de género [Street vendors and the politics of gender representation]. Umbrales, 29, 331-359.
31.
ItikawaL. (2010). Trabalho Informal nos Espaços Públicos no Centro de São Paulo [Informal Work in the Public Spaces of Central São Paulo]. (Doctorial thesis). Universidade de São Paulo, Butantã, Brazil.
KingD.RuedaD. (2008). Cheap labor: The new politics of bread and roses in industrial democracies. Perspectives on Politics, 6, 279-297.
34.
KurtzM. J. (2004). The dilemmas of democracy in the open economy: Lessons from Latin America. World Politics, 56, 262-302.
35.
LazarS. (2007). El Alto, Rebel City: Self and citizenship in Andean Bolivia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
36.
LehmL. A.CusicanquiS. R.RicaldiV. H. (1988). Los Artesanos Libertarios y la Ética del Trabajo [The Liberated Artisans and the Ethic of Work]. La Paz, Bolivia: Ediciones del THOA.
37.
MacCarthyA.ZaldM. (1973). The trend of social movements in America. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
38.
MacGaffeyJ.Bazenguissa-GangaR. (2000). Congo-Paris: Transnational traders on the margins of the law. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
39.
MadridR. (2012). The rise of ethnic politics in Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
40.
MaleskyE. (2015, March9). Participation in regulatory drafting and downstream compliance. Paper presented at the American Political Science association annual conference in San Francisco, CA.
41.
MarwellG.OliverP. (1993). The critical mass in collective action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
42.
McAdamD.TarrowS.TillyC. (2003). Dynamics of contention. Social Movement Studies, 2, 99-102.
43.
McCarthyJ. D.ZaldM. N. (1987). Resource mobilization and social movements. In McCarthyZald (Eds.), Social Movements in an Organizational Society (pp. 15-47). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
44.
Meinzen-DickR.RajuK. V.GulatiA. (2002). What affects organization and collective action for managing resources? Evidence from canal irrigation systems in India. World Development, 30, 649-666.
45.
MuñozP. (2014). An informational theory of campaign clientelism: The case of Peru. Comparative Politics, 47, 79-98.
46.
NaylorR. T. (2004). Wages of crime: Black markets, illegal finance, and the underworld economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
47.
NeuwirthR. (2012). Stealth of nations: The global rise of the informal economy. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
48.
OliverP. (1980). Rewards and punishments as selective incentives for collective action: Theoretical investigations. American Journal of Sociology, 85, 1356-1375.
49.
OlsonM. (1965). The logic of collective action (Vol. 124). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
50.
OstromE. (1990). Governing the commons. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
51.
OstromE. (2007). Collective action theory. In BoixC.StokesS. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative politics (pp. 186-208). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
52.
Palmer-RubinB. (2016). Interest organizations and distributive politics: Small-business subsidies in Mexico. World Development, 84, 97-117.
53.
Peredo BeltránE. (1992). Recoveras de los Andes: La Identidad de la Chola del Mercado [Recoveras of the Andes: The Identity of the Market Chola]. La Paz, Bolivia: TAHIPAMU.
54.
Pereira MoratóR. (2008). Para escuchar las voces de la calle: Las contradicciones entre el derecho al empleo y el derecho a la ciudad [To hear the voices of the street: the contradictions between the right to work and the right to public space]. Tinkazos, 11(25), 49-58.
55.
PerryG. (2007). Informality: Exit and exclusion. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.
56.
PortesA.CastellsM.BentonL. A. (1989). The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less developed countries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
57.
PutnamR. D.LeonardiR.NanettiR. Y. (1994). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
58.
QuackenbushS. (2004). The rationality of rational choice theory. International Interactions, 30, 87-107.
59.
RobertsK. M. (2002). Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin Americas neoliberal era. Studies in Comparative International Development, 36(4), 3-33.
60.
RoeverS. C. (2005). Negotiating formality: Informal sector, market, and state in Peru (Doctorial thesis), University of California, Berkeley.
61.
RojasB. (1992). Minoristas en los Procesos Democráticos [Small retailers in democratic processes]. La Paz, Bolivia: Centro de Estudios para el desarollo laboral y agrario.
62.
SchneiderF.BuehnA.MontenegroC. E. (2010). New estimates for the shadow economies all over the world. International Economic Journal, 24, 443-461.
63.
ScottJ. C. (1987). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
64.
SeawrightJ. (2012). Party-system collapse: The roots of crisis in Peru and Venezuela. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
65.
SignorinoC. S. (2003). Structure and uncertainty in discrete choice models. Political Analysis, 11, 316-344.
66.
TarrowS. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
67.
TassiN.MedeirosC.CarmonaA. R.FerrufinoG. (2013). “Hacer Plata sin Plata:” El Desborde de los Comerciantes Populares en Bolivia [To make money without money: Small Merchants in Bolivia]. La Paz, Bolivia: Postgrado para la Investigación Estratégica en Bolivia.
68.
TreismanD. (2000). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics, 76, 399-457.
69.
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing. (2016). WIEGO organization and representation database. Retrieved from http://wiego.org/wiegodatabase
70.
YasharD. J. (2005). Contesting citizenship in Latin America: The rise of indigenous movements and the postliberal challenge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
