Disobedient markets : street vendors, enforcement, and state intervention in collective action

Under what conditions do informal workers organize? Contrary to conventional wisdom, informal workers organize in nearly every major city on every continent and officials often encourage them to do so. I demonstrate that under certain conditions, governments offer private benefits to informal workers who organize self-regulating associations, which solves the workers' collective action problem. This leads to another puzzle: why do governments pay people to organize, especially people who routinely violate the law? I argue that where the state cannot stop violators, it may prefer to pay violators to organize a self-regulating group rather than enforce the law itself. The state can then bargain over legalization, regulation, and enforcement with a representative group. The project challenges assumptions about collective action in marginalized communities and offers a new theory of collective action where informal workers interact strategically with the state. I argue that where enforcement is costly, states may take an active role in encouraging potential violators to organize and, once organized, regulate themselves. Recent work on the politics of enforcement demonstrates that governments reap political benefits by not enforcing laws against poor citizens in informal work and housing. However, foregoing enforcement can create additional political, public health, and material costs. I extend this work by using enforcement costs to explain why informal workers organize. I suggest that where governments successfully encourage potential violators to organize, governments keep the political benefits of forgoing enforcement while civil society organizations assume partial responsibility for enforcement. My fieldwork included 14 months in Bolivia and Brazil working as a street vendor, gathering 92 interviews, and administering two surveys. Chapter 1 of the project develops the puzzle---why do informal workers organize, given barriers to collective action---in the context of current research. Chapter 2 presents the theory and then formalizes it in a game theoretic model of collective action. Chapter 3 justifies the model's assumptions and demonstrates how its dynamics work in an ethnography of street vendor organizations and their interactions with the city government in La Paz, Bolivia. Chapter 4 illustrates how the model explains variation across people and places by comparing street vendors in La Paz to their counterparts in the neighboring city of El Alto. I then compare the highly organized street vendors in La Paz to the sparsely organized vendors in São Paulo, Brazil. Chapter 5 tests the theory on out-of-sample data: 26,304 self-employed respondents in 17 countries from the Latin American Public Opinion Project. I analyze the data with logistic regressions and then move to a nonparametric machine learning framework to address concerns about identifying assumptions. I find similar patterns in different types of data across different analytic frameworks, lending support to the theory.Governmen

Bribery Cartels: Collusive Corruption in Bolivian Street Markets

Many Bolivians engage in corruption through intermediaries, like civil society representatives and lawyers, instead of paying officials directly. People vocally resent that intermediaries add an extra layer of costs and opaqueness to corruption but still choose to pay bribes through intermediaries that knowingly take advantage of them. Why do intermediaries facilitate corruption? While other studies on corrupt intermediaries find that they reduce uncertainty and transaction costs, this study contributes to corruption research by finding that intermediaries engage in cartel-like behavior by disproportionally helping officials and intentionally increasing uncertainty and costs for the average citizen. Ethnographic evidence from street markets in La Paz demonstrates that civil society actors like street vendors’ union representatives advance their careers by collecting and delivering bribes to specific bureaucrats. Collusive relationships between bureaucrats and intermediaries hide and perpetuate corruption, while giving the appearance of a transparent government that is responsive to civil society. Resumen Bastante bolivianos se involucran en la corrupción a través de intermediarios, como líderes de la sociedad civil y abogados, en vez de pagar funcionarios directamente. Ciudadanos no les gustan que los intermediarios agregan costos extras y opacidad a la corrupción, pero aún así eligen pagar coimas a través de intermediarios que se aprovechan de ellos. ¿Por qué los intermediarios de la sociedad civil facilitan la corrupción? Mientras otros estudios sobre intermediarios corruptos encuentran que los intermediarios reducen la incertidumbre y los costos de transacción, este estudio encuentra que los intermediarios participan en carteles de coimas, porque ayudan desproporcionadamente a los funcionarios y aumentan intencionalmente la incertidumbre y los costos para ciudadanos. Evidencia etnográfica original de los mercados populares de La Paz demuestra que los actores de la sociedad civil, como los líderes sindicales de los comerciantes populares, avanzan en sus carreras colectando y entregando coimas a funcionarios. Las relaciones colusorias entre los burócratas y los intermediarios de la sociedad civil ocultan y perpetúan la corrupción. Al mismo tiempo, les dan la apariencia de un gobierno transparente que responde a la sociedad civil

Repression and international conflict

textScholars suspect that violence at home is linked to violence abroad but few studies theorize or test any relationship between them. Under what conditions does repression lead to international conflict? I extend the logic of why leaders repress to suggest that repression can alter states' power internationally. I argue that leaders can repress to prepare for a possible international conflict, but the act of repressing alters their international bargaining power through a signaling mechanism. The argument implies that governments continue to use repression because it can increase their power vis-a-vis both domestic and international opponents. With a global dataset on torture, death, disappearance, arbitrary arrests and international conflict, I find that--even after controlling for regime type, civil war, and military capabilities--states that repress are more likely to initiate conflict the following year than states that respect basic human rights. Simultaneously, engaging in extreme repression virtually guarantees that no state will target the repressor.Governmen

Activists, Parties, and the Expansion of Trans Rights in Bolivia

Bolivia prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and passed a ground-breaking gender identity law. These laws had little support among voters and passed along with heteronormative measures. Why did activists succeed in proposing and passing legislation that most voters did not support? Why were Bolivia’s advances in LGBTQ+ rights accompanied by heteronormative laws? We argue that parties with deep ties to social movements are more likely to advance legislation that expands LGBTQ+ rights than other parties and that contradictory laws emerge where both organized religion and LGBTQ+ activists are party constituents. We describe how Bolivian trans activists leveraged their access to ruling party legislators, using interviews with activists and officials, and briefly discuss the cases of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Colombia

Compounding Crises: Bolivia in 2020

Bolivia began 2020 in the midst of a political crisis, with an interim administration led by Jeanine Añez, who assumed power during the political crisis that ended the administration of Evo Morales in November 2019. On March 10th, the government identified Bolivia's first COVID-19 case. The administration's swift initial response was marred by corruption, a strained public health system, and resistance from citizens and politicians. This essay focuses on the unprecedented character of a double crisis in Bolivia: a health crisis preceded and aggravated by a political crisis. The crises put the Bolivian government under intense pressure. The thrice-rescheduled presidential elections on October 18th returned the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) to power with a decisive victory under the leadership of former finance minister Luis Arce Catacora and former foreign minister David Choquehuanca. We review the consequences of the year's events on human and economic development and conclude by anticipating future challenges

Legitimacy and Policy during Crises: Subnational COVID-19 Responses in Bolivia

Why did some Bolivian departments have more success containing COVID-19 than others? We argue that low government legitimacy hampers coordinated responses to national crises, particularly where political polarization is severe and the crisis response becomes politicized. Low legitimacy can intensify the challenges of poverty and poor infrastructure. An original dataset of daily observations on subnational coronavirus policy and cell phone mobility data, paired with administrative data on cases and deaths, suggests that political divisions influenced governors’ policy implementation and citizens’ compliance. In departments that opposed the president, policies were more likely to deviate from the stricter national policy while mobility and protest activity were high. In departments aligned with the president, local policy followed national policy and citizens complied with policy and quarantine restrictions for a longer period of time

Poverty, precarious work, and the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons from Bolivia

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with a gross domestic product of around US$3500 per capita, health spending of approximately$220 per capita, a labour market dominated by informal work, and a weak health system. However, in the response to COVID-19, Bolivia has fared better than other health systems in the region and provides insight with regard to the implementation of subnational non-pharmaceutical interventions and supporting workers without social protection. The Bolivian Government confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the country on March 10, 2020, and responded quickly by cancelling events, closing schools and borders, and implementing a national lockdown on March 22, 2020. However, the Bolivian Government was under pressure to open the economy in an election season. In response, the Bolivian Government shifted responsibility for most non-pharmaceutical interventions to departmental and municipal governments on June 1, 2020. The Bolivian Government maintained a mask mandate, school and border closures, and a nightly curfew, while allowing departmental and municipal governments to set workplace, social gathering, population mobility, and public transit policies. Daily deaths from COVID-19 increased markedly from 20 on June 1, 2020, to 96 on Aug 1, 2020.1 &nbsp;</p

Why Informal Workers Organize Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State

This book examines the organization of informal workers across the globe, and the differing degrees to which they vary. The reality of informal work described in this book is supported by surveys in 60 countries, over 150 interviews with informal workers in Latin America, ethnographic data, and administrative data

Do Poor Citizens Benefit from Mega-Events? São Paulo’s Street Vendors and the 2014 FIFA World Cup

AbstractInternational mega-events inject millions of dollars into host countries’ economies, yet few studies assess which citizens benefit from events and which do not. Governments justify their bids for mega-events by arguing that infrastructure projects, event-related jobs, and tourist spending benefit many citizens. However, researchers find mixed impacts on host economies and the average citizen. Scholars and activists argue that a few businesses benefit while high prices and event-specific laws exclude poor citizens. Under what conditions do poor citizens benefit from mega-events? This article analyzes original interview, survey, and participant observation data on street vendors in São Paulo, Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The project finds that most street vendors lost money, while a minority made record profits. Those who benefited from the event used brokers, bribes, and pockets of forbearance to circumvent FIFA’s exclusionary rules

Book Reviews: Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies

Verónica Gago’s book is a tour de force through more than a century of economic and political thought—as well as Buenos Aires’s La Salada market, clandestine textile workshops, and migrant labor networks. Gago traces the perpetuation of neoliberal logic through the market itself and individuals’ strategies in chapter 1, the textile workshops and Bolivian labor networks that staff them in chapters 2 and 3, and the neighborhoods that house workers and workshops in chapters 4 and 5. John C. Cross’s 1998 ethnography Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City (Stanford University Press) examines how street vendors in Mexico City created livelihoods, interest groups, and pockets of popular contestation out of crisis and authoritarian cleavages