Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0002
C. Hummel
Chapter 2 develops a theory of state intervention in collective action. It argues that as unorganized people create negative externalities, officials increasingly have an incentive to encourage people who organize self-regulating organizations. When officials intervene with cash, licenses, and access to the bureaucracy, they lower the barriers that kept people from organizing on their own. Once informal workers take these incentives and start organizations, officials can bargain over regulation and enforcement with representatives instead of a mass of individuals. The theory builds on contributions from Olson (1965), Ostrom (1990), and Holland (2017). The theory is formalized in a game theoretic model to show that officials and informal workers are strategically linked. The chapter uses the model to demonstrate the exact conditions under which we can expect informal workers’ organizations as a result of officials’ encouragement. The model produces multiple equilibria that reflect the different levels of organization that we observe in informal sectors around the world. The equilibrium conditions generate clear expectations for the patterns that we should see in the empirical chapters if the theory is correct.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0001
C. Hummel
Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle of organized street vendors with the stories of two street vendors: Rosa, the founding leader of a champagne ladies’ union in La Paz, and Renato, who works as an unorganized electronics vendor in São Paulo. The chapter then situates the puzzle within existing research on collective action, civil society, informal work, and state capacity. According to most scholars, informal workers do not organize, which makes Rosa’s union and its affiliation with a national street vendor confederation puzzling. The chapter outlines an explanation for why informal workers organize, assesses alternative explanations around grassroots activism and clientelism, and presents the research design for the book. Specifically, it finds that officials encourage informal workers to organize self-regulating groups. The chapter argues that this is most likely to happen where officials have governance goals and career ambitions but face capacity constraints and where informal workers have the know-how to organize self-regulating groups.
{"title":"Why Do Informal Workers Organize?","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle of organized street vendors with the stories of two street vendors: Rosa, the founding leader of a champagne ladies’ union in La Paz, and Renato, who works as an unorganized electronics vendor in São Paulo. The chapter then situates the puzzle within existing research on collective action, civil society, informal work, and state capacity. According to most scholars, informal workers do not organize, which makes Rosa’s union and its affiliation with a national street vendor confederation puzzling. The chapter outlines an explanation for why informal workers organize, assesses alternative explanations around grassroots activism and clientelism, and presents the research design for the book. Specifically, it finds that officials encourage informal workers to organize self-regulating groups. The chapter argues that this is most likely to happen where officials have governance goals and career ambitions but face capacity constraints and where informal workers have the know-how to organize self-regulating groups.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116072666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0007
C. Hummel
Chapter 7 discusses the broader implications of the argument for the world’s two billion informal workers. The chapter advances the theoretical claim that when individuals break the law, they can paradoxically get help from officials to organize. It elaborates implications for effective formalization policies, using the mixed success example of a tax reform in Bolivia. It also draw parallels to policing and enforcement trends in the United States. The chapter carefully summarizes the material covered in the preceding chapters. The chapter concludes the book with implications for state intervention in civil society, as well as contentious politics, enforcement, and state building.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 7 discusses the broader implications of the argument for the world’s two billion informal workers. The chapter advances the theoretical claim that when individuals break the law, they can paradoxically get help from officials to organize. It elaborates implications for effective formalization policies, using the mixed success example of a tax reform in Bolivia. It also draw parallels to policing and enforcement trends in the United States. The chapter carefully summarizes the material covered in the preceding chapters. The chapter concludes the book with implications for state intervention in civil society, as well as contentious politics, enforcement, and state building.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"107 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121013390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0005
C. Hummel
Chapter 5 develops an ethnography of street vendors, their organizations, and the city officials who they interact with in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. The chapter is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019 as well as administrative data on 31,906 street vending licenses in the city. Fieldwork included interviews, participant observation at dozens of meetings between bureaucrats and organized vendors, ride-alongs with the Municipal Guard, a street vendor survey, working as a street vendor in a clothing market, and selling wedding services with a street vendor cooperative. The theory’s observable implications are illustrated with ethnographic evidence, survey results, and license data from La Paz. I discuss how street vending has changed in the city and how officials have intervened in collective action decisions as the informal sector grew. The chapter demonstrates that officials increased benefits to organized vendors as the costs of regulating markets increased. Additionally, the leaders that take advantage of these offers tend to have more resources than their colleagues, and as the offers increased, so did the level of organization among the city’s street vendors. The chapter also discusses the many trade-offs that officials make in implementing different policies, and how officials manage the often combative organizations that they encourage.
{"title":"Managing Contentious Collective Action","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 develops an ethnography of street vendors, their organizations, and the city officials who they interact with in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. The chapter is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019 as well as administrative data on 31,906 street vending licenses in the city. Fieldwork included interviews, participant observation at dozens of meetings between bureaucrats and organized vendors, ride-alongs with the Municipal Guard, a street vendor survey, working as a street vendor in a clothing market, and selling wedding services with a street vendor cooperative. The theory’s observable implications are illustrated with ethnographic evidence, survey results, and license data from La Paz. I discuss how street vending has changed in the city and how officials have intervened in collective action decisions as the informal sector grew. The chapter demonstrates that officials increased benefits to organized vendors as the costs of regulating markets increased. Additionally, the leaders that take advantage of these offers tend to have more resources than their colleagues, and as the offers increased, so did the level of organization among the city’s street vendors. The chapter also discusses the many trade-offs that officials make in implementing different policies, and how officials manage the often combative organizations that they encourage.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"255 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132189331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0006
C. Hummel
Chapter 6 develops the theory in a comparative context, by adding case studies of organized and unorganized street vendors and the city governments that they interact with in El Alto, Bolivia and two districts in São Paulo, Brazil. The chapter is based on original interview, survey, participant observation, and ethnographic data that was collected during a total of three months in each city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019. As part of the project, the author briefly sold selfie sticks as a street vendor in a central district of São Paulo in 2015. Comparing the city of La Paz to the neighboring city of El Alto holds many national-level features constant but varies city government enforcement capacity. Comparing two districts in São Paulo to each other and then La Paz and El Alto adds more variation on enforcement capacity. São Paulo, the large, modern metropolis of the region’s richest country, with many employment opportunities, services, stable laws, and a history of labor organizing, should have more organized street vendors than La Paz, according to resource- or political context-based theories of collective action. Instead, only 2 percent of São Paulo’s 100,000 vendors are organized, compared to 75 percent of La Paz’s 60,000. I explain this difference with the interaction between individual resources, official incentives, and local government enforcement capacity.
{"title":"How to Make Money while Running from the Cops","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 6 develops the theory in a comparative context, by adding case studies of organized and unorganized street vendors and the city governments that they interact with in El Alto, Bolivia and two districts in São Paulo, Brazil. The chapter is based on original interview, survey, participant observation, and ethnographic data that was collected during a total of three months in each city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019. As part of the project, the author briefly sold selfie sticks as a street vendor in a central district of São Paulo in 2015. Comparing the city of La Paz to the neighboring city of El Alto holds many national-level features constant but varies city government enforcement capacity. Comparing two districts in São Paulo to each other and then La Paz and El Alto adds more variation on enforcement capacity. São Paulo, the large, modern metropolis of the region’s richest country, with many employment opportunities, services, stable laws, and a history of labor organizing, should have more organized street vendors than La Paz, according to resource- or political context-based theories of collective action. Instead, only 2 percent of São Paulo’s 100,000 vendors are organized, compared to 75 percent of La Paz’s 60,000. I explain this difference with the interaction between individual resources, official incentives, and local government enforcement capacity.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123458972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0003
C. Hummel
Chapter 3 introduces survey data from around the world and establishes broad trends in informal work and civil society participation. Descriptive statistics show that informal workers organize in nearly every country in the sample and extensively organize in many. I estimate a data set of informal workers using survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and a machine learning algorithm. Regressions on the estimated data set, a data set of known informal workers, and a data set of self-employed workers suggest that informal workers are more likely to organize in low-capacity countries. The chapter then turns to survey data from the 42 countries around the world in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) database and find similar patterns between informal work, state capacity, and political participation. The quantitative analyses point to cases to examine in more depth. Two cities in the La Paz department of Bolivia, La Paz and El Alto were selected, to see how informal workers interact with officials with lower enforcement capacity, as well as two districts in São Paulo, Brazil, to understand how informal workers interact with officials with higher enforcement capacity.
{"title":"Informal Work in Numbers","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 introduces survey data from around the world and establishes broad trends in informal work and civil society participation. Descriptive statistics show that informal workers organize in nearly every country in the sample and extensively organize in many. I estimate a data set of informal workers using survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and a machine learning algorithm. Regressions on the estimated data set, a data set of known informal workers, and a data set of self-employed workers suggest that informal workers are more likely to organize in low-capacity countries. The chapter then turns to survey data from the 42 countries around the world in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) database and find similar patterns between informal work, state capacity, and political participation. The quantitative analyses point to cases to examine in more depth. Two cities in the La Paz department of Bolivia, La Paz and El Alto were selected, to see how informal workers interact with officials with lower enforcement capacity, as well as two districts in São Paulo, Brazil, to understand how informal workers interact with officials with higher enforcement capacity.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117296331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0004
C. Hummel
Chapter 4 tells the history and structure of street vending in two municipalities in the La Paz department of Bolivia and two districts in the São Paulo state in of Brazil. This chapter demonstrates how officials actively intervene in informal markets and workers’ organizations, and suggests how those interventions vary over time, creating highly structured organizations around La Paz and fleeting organizations around São Paulo. The chapter then develops the specific incentive structures that officials and workers face. Chapter 4 grounds the game theoretic model’s assumptions in observations from street markets in La Paz: It shows that unorganized street vendors create negative externalities, that street vendors approach collective action decisions with a cost–benefit analysis, that officials offer private benefits to organized street vendors, especially leaders, and that once organized, street vendors self-regulate and bargain with officials.
{"title":"Street Markets in La Paz and São Paulo","authors":"C. Hummel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847812.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 tells the history and structure of street vending in two municipalities in the La Paz department of Bolivia and two districts in the São Paulo state in of Brazil. This chapter demonstrates how officials actively intervene in informal markets and workers’ organizations, and suggests how those interventions vary over time, creating highly structured organizations around La Paz and fleeting organizations around São Paulo. The chapter then develops the specific incentive structures that officials and workers face. Chapter 4 grounds the game theoretic model’s assumptions in observations from street markets in La Paz: It shows that unorganized street vendors create negative externalities, that street vendors approach collective action decisions with a cost–benefit analysis, that officials offer private benefits to organized street vendors, especially leaders, and that once organized, street vendors self-regulate and bargain with officials.","PeriodicalId":423665,"journal":{"name":"Why Informal Workers Organize","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116697420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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