Collective Action and Policy Preferences Among Informal Workers in Mexico City

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I

Abstract

In the developing world, even where democratic institutions are in place, informal workers often present a paradox: they are among the largest groups in the population, but also considered to be among the most disenfranchised.
However, recent research has shown that this sector of society does sometimes influence policy outcomes. Two are the alternative mechanisms proposed to account for such influence: on the one hand, the electoral importance of this constituency in large urban settings; on the other hand, their capacity for creating organizations. The first one relies on the policy preferences espoused by this group, while the second one highlights its capacity for collective action.
This paper seeks to bridge the gap between both literatures, showing how both mechanisms can coexist and contribute to shape policy outcomes. I propose that organizations not only influence the intended targets of their action (powerful allies and decision makers): members’ behavior is also changed by feat of participating in collective action. Thus, I concentrate my analysis on the individual level, but I reverse the most traditional approaches to political mobilization: instead of focusing on how members shape organizational behavior, I analyze how organizational participation shapes informal workers’ preferences over taxation and redistribution, two key issues for those that are both low-income citizens and operate at the margins of taxation systems.
By doing this, I seek to make two contributions. First, I complement recent studies on social policy in developing countries, which have highlighted that where welfare structures are underdeveloped or reach the target population very unevenly, informal workers have little incentives to support traditional welfare and taxation schemes that favor labor market insiders. I sustain that informal workers have more nuanced preferences regarding these policy areas, and favor non-contributory social policy and taxation schemes with special provisions for those previously outside the system. Second, linking the individual and the organizational level, I show that those results are stronger for workers that participate in organizations, particularly if the latter provide assistance in the form of information and sponsoring of individual claims.
I support this claim with evidence from in-depth interviews and an original survey conducted among street vendors in commercial areas in Mexico city, which includes a conjoint experiment on workers' policy preferences.

Author

• Federico Fuchs, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill