Taming the “Rogue” Sector: Studying State Effectiveness in Africa through Informal Transport Politics

Goodfellow, Tom

doi:10.5129/001041515814224462

Cited by 55 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Many workers experience poverty, informality, and precariousness in other parts of their lives as well: in informal housing, transportation, and unregulated health care (Desmond, 2012;Holland, 2014;Goodfellow, 2015). Existing theory predicts that informal workers rarely organize and participate in civil society (King and Rueda, 2008, p.292-293).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…States' ability to enforce laws is a central component of state capacity, according to the many scholars who argue for a behavioral-based definition of state capacity (Amengual, 2013;Besley and Persson, 2010;Goodfellow, 2015). States with more capacity may produce the same laws as states with less (Amengual, 2013, p.527), but because increased capacity means increased implementation, higher capacity states interact more with civil society in the process.…”

Section: State Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disobedient Markets: Street Vendors, Enforcement, and State Intervention in Collective Action

Hummel

2017

Comparative Political Studies

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AcknowledgmentsHundreds of people helped with this project and I am deeply indebted to all of them. First, this project only exists because of the incredible women and men who work on the streets and put in extra hours to organize their colleagues and demand a better life. I am grateful to the dozens of street vendors in Bolivia and Brazil who decided to trust me, talk with me, and teach me. I am especially grateful to the women and men who took the time to explain how the markets work, how to sell in them, and how to interact with officials as a vendor. I regret that I can't thank people by name for confidentiality reasons, but from the bottom of my heart, thank you G.for teaching me how to set up a stall and be a vendor, and I hope we have many more conversations about politics over api. Thank you to the champañeras for making me an honorary sister and for letting me spend so many happy hours with all of you in the plaza. Thank you R. for being my sócio, teaching me how to set up and protect a stall, and sharing all of your stories with me; let's plan for many more. Thank you to everyone at the Federation and the Markets Office for your patience, your stories, and your advice. In addition to the vendors that are part of this project, the project would not have gone very far without the help of Cecilia Salazar, Luciana Molina

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: State Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Disobedient Markets: Street Vendors, Enforcement, and State Intervention in Collective Action

Hummel

2017

Comparative Political Studies

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“…In addition, informal economic activity by definition lies at the margins of the tax and regulatory reach of government agencies (Castells & Portes, 1989). As informal economies are not officially "seen" by the state, attempts to tax and regulate these businesses are likely to be unofficial, less predictable, and more uneven that the state's efforts in formal areas of the economy (Joshi, Prichard, & Heady, 2014;Goodfellow, 2015). In addition, informal businesses may face attempts at regulation and extraction from non-state actors, such as community organizations and criminal gangs.…”

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confidence: 99%

State, Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

et al. 2018

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Contemporary urbanization in the Global South merits greater attention from scholars of comparative politics. Governance, associational life, and political behavior take on distinctive forms in the social and institutional environments created by rapid urbanization, particularly within informal settlements and informal labor markets. In this special issue, we examine forms of collective action and claims-making in these spaces. We also consider how the state assesses, maps, and responds to the demands of informal sector actors. Tackling questions of citizen and state behavior in these informal urban contexts requires innovative research strategies due to data scarcity and social and institutional complexity. Contributors to this symposium explicate novel strategies for addressing these challenges, including the use of informal archives, worksite-based sampling, ethnographic survey design, enforcement process-tracing, and crowd-sourced data.Acknowledgments:

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“…In Uganda, UTODA exhibits all the main characteristics of a 'large, singular, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered [and] sectorally compartmentalised' representational monopoly (Schmitter, 1974, p. 100), as will be shown below. However, other spheres of activity even within informal transport are characterised by markedly different forms of interest representation: Uganda's boda-boda motorcycle taxi sector has a large array of competing and voluntary organisations, thus appearing much more pluralist than corporatistperhaps because it is a much easier sector to enter due to low capital costs, making it more diffuse and less amenable to monopolistic representation (Goodfellow, 2015). Moreover, having adopted widespread liberal democratic reforms (often under pressure from donors), Uganda and similarly 'new' and donor-dependent democracies often have nominally pluralist systems.…”

Section: Interest Group Organisation and The Dynamics Of 'Capture'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Double Capture’ and De-Democratisation: Interest Group Politics and Uganda’s ‘Transport Mafia’

Goodfellow

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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This article analyses problems of interest representation and democratic consolidation, using a case study of the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA). It shows how apparently representative organisational forms can exploit the majority of their members, bolstering the power of political-economic elites who straddle the statesociety divide, as well as how such organisations can undermine the foundations for democratic consolidation more broadly. Challenging conventional understandings of 'state capture', the paper argues that UTODA's organisational power instead evolved through processes conceptualised as 'double capture': first, the government infiltrated the informal transport sector, but subsequently the transport organisation came to wield disproportionate influence over the state itself, with detrimental effects on both urban services and popular representation. The long-term domination by this authoritarian organisation meant that even after its downfall in 2011 there was little organisational capacity to build on in the sector, facilitating the reassertion of top-down governmental control.

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Taming the “Rogue” Sector: Studying State Effectiveness in Africa through Informal Transport Politics

Cited by 55 publications

References 33 publications

Disobedient Markets: Street Vendors, Enforcement, and State Intervention in Collective Action

Disobedient Markets: Street Vendors, Enforcement, and State Intervention in Collective Action

State, Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

‘Double Capture’ and De-Democratisation: Interest Group Politics and Uganda’s ‘Transport Mafia’

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