5 walton urban conflicts ijurr

Urban Conflict and Social Movements inPoor Countries: Theory and Evidence ofCollective Action*

JOHN WALTON

Urbanity is violence. The town spreads with one violence after another. Its equilibrium isviolence. In the Creole city the violence hits harder than elsewhere. First, because around her,murder (slavery, colonialism, racism) prevails, but especially because this city, without thefactories, without the industries with which to absorb the new influx, is empty. It attractswithout proposing anything besides resistance . . . So why be astonished at its scars, itswarpaint? (from the novelTexacoby Patrick Chamoiseau, 1992).

Introduction

When experts reflect on political conflict in third world cities, they typically concludethat it is either endemic or occasional, radical or conservative, tempestuous or quiescent.Depending upon their assessment of the basic facts, specialists reason further that theevidence confirms either a theory of insurgent class action or opportunistic client co-optation. The masses of urban poor and their occasional allies in organized labor or pettycommerce are understood as either autonomous political actors or manipulated clients ofelite patronage. The division of opinion is not only diametrical but perennial. Each decadeof development studies rehearses the debate between activism and clientism. Theoreticalpositions first articulated in the 1960s are replicated today, albeit in different terms.Despite a wealth of comparative research on the politics of urbanization, no generalexplanation has won acceptance. Indeed, few have been attempted.

The hypothesis that rapid urbanization in the less developed countries generatespolitical mobilization was first advanced by theorists of social disorganization who arguedthat uprooted masses of rural migrants would overwhelm the carrying capacity of cities,leading to unemployment, disappointed expectations, alienation, misery and vulnerabilityto extremist movements (Kornhauser, 1959; Abrams, 1965). As political events of the1960s unfolded, this jaundiced view was transformed in studies that challenged

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* This paper was presented at the Cities in Transition Conference, Research Committee on Sociology ofUrban and Regional Development, International Sociological Association, Humbolt University, Berlin, July1997. I am grateful to Margit Mayer and Hartmut Haußermann for the invitation and conference arrangements.A number of persons provided advice on the location and presentation of comparative data including RykenGrattet, Jon Shefner, John Hartman, Charles Ragin, Ken Bollen and Robert Jackman. I have benefited fromreviews and comments by Susan Eckstein, Bryan Roberts, Sidney Tarrow, Michael Harloe and ChrisPickvance.

characterizations of the urban poor as ‘marginal masses’ and argued for their activeparticipation in community organizations and social movements (Ross, 1975; Perlman,1976; Castells, 1977; 1983). Although some of these community self-help movementsdwindled as their material goals were won, new forms of mobilization seemed to take theirplace. By the 1980s, another urban insurgency was noted in the ‘new social movements’ ofwomen, Christian base communities, Muslim brotherhoods, environmentalists, humanrights activists and indigenous groups (Slater, 1985; Jelin, 1987; Eckstein, 1989; Escobarand Alvarez, 1992; Wignaraja, 1993). After a controversial beginning under the aegis ofmarginality theory, analyses of political mobilization by diverse urban movements andconstituencies are very much in fashion today.

The same may be said of rival interpretations based on co-optation and the patron-client model. Nelson’s (1979: 383) masterful survey of cities in Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica compares participation of the poor in political parties, special-interest groupsand ethnic associations with a fourth type, clientism, and concludes that ‘patron-clientlinks are the most universal’. According to this theory, the poor are fundamentallysatisfied with urban life, too busy making ends meet to protest, and, as time goes on,become astute petitioners in the ‘demand-making’ process (Cornelius, 1975). In responseto recent incidents of social unrest in Latin America, Gilbert (1994: 128) observes that onbalance ‘there is relatively little protest given the appalling conditions in which so manypeople live’. Accordingly, the important question is, why this pattern of ‘relativepassivity’?

Although clientism is usually inferred from cross-sectional studies, someinterpretations deal with changing historical conditions. Hobsbawm’s (1967) study ofLatin American urban politics argues that a passive working class emerged under specificcircumstances. As urbanization accelerated in the 1930s, cities and their skilled workingclasses that once had included a high proportion of European craftsmen were diluted anddepoliticized. Internal rural-urban migrants accustomed to thecaudillismo of landedpatrons were politically immature, and they found life in the cities generally satisfyinggiven their own recent past. Political participation took the form of deference andpatronage under populist regimes. ‘[I]t is remarkable how few riots — even food riots —there have been in the great Latin American cities during a period when the mass of theirimpoverished and economically marginal inhabitants multiplied, and inflation as often asnot was uncontrolled’ (Hobsbawm, 1967: 60). Portes (1972) supports these observationswith specific reference to Latin American slum dwellers, arguing that politicalconservatism is the rational posture for these upwardly mobile groups who aspire to amiddle-class lifestyle. Similar conclusions about political passivity derive from criticalanalyses of state and party systems that co-opt the urban poor with small concessions inthe form of services and subsidies while elites grab the lion’s share of privilege andincome (Eckstein, 1977; Ve´lez-Ibanez, 1983). In these interpretations the urban poor aredefended as rational actors making the best of austere circumstances rather than gulliblesubjects of elite manipulation. Although the theory of clientism has enjoyed its greatestsuccess as a critique of jeremiads about social disintegration (e.g. Nelson, 1979), itcontinues to resonate with pragmatic accounts of urban politics from Rio de Janeiro (Gay,1990) to Lagos (Barnes, 1986).

If most contributors to this debate have defended by turns sober clientism or hopefulactivism, a few have analyzed social conditions that might explain varied instances ofboth. Hobsbawm’s (1967: 65) historical argument, for example, notes that the explosivepolitical potential of the city was held in check as long as industrialization and expandingemployment kept pace with urban migration. But ‘the comparative lull in the masspolitics of Latin America . . . will prove temporary’. Writing in 1967 and looking ahead toa time when labor absorption would begin to fail, Hobsbawm presciently saw a period ofrenewed conflict on the horizon. Leeds and Leeds (1976) based their analysis of variationin mass political participation on characteristics of the state and party system, arguing that

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Urban conflict and social movements in poor countries 461

squatter communities themselves manipulated the system as much as they weremanipulated by it. Clientist participation might generate real material gains (not simplyconcessions) in a multiparty system, yet expose the poor to unnecessary risks underauthoritarian regimes. Dynamics of state and party must be added to socio-economicconditions in an interactive theory of political action. Recently, Stokes (1995) hasexamined Peruvian urban politics over time, concluding that clientism has given way toactivism as a result of state initiatives for the provision of urban services that are seizedby local organizations, diffusion of labor movement strategies, and ‘counter-hegemonic’ideologies of the Church and educational institutions. In the anguished period of debtcrisis and structural adjustment since the early 1980s, activist interpretations of thirdworld urban politics have gained ground.

It is difficult to argue with any of these positions. Doubtless there are times andplaces in which activism or clientism reigns, just as there are social conditions thatpromote a transition from one to the other. The real drawback with these formulations —many of them summaries of vivid urban ethnographies — is that they tend to privilegedescription over explanation. Too often the research question becomes whether activismor clientism is the essential state of the masses rather than whether certain conditions areconducive to more or less participation, different forms of conflict and cooperation,changing arrangements of power, and so forth. Too often polemics with no unambiguousempirical solution substitute for explanatory propositions capable of evaluation. Toooften the debate over activism vs. clientism leads to an impasse´. The purpose of this paperis to develop a theoretical framework for understanding urban politics in poor countriesand to illustrate (rather than to test rigorously) how propositions derived from that theorycompare with a variety of available evidence. The paper endeavors to develop hypothesescapable of more exacting tests and to stimulate new approaches to data collection capableof recording varied forms of urban conflict which so far have only been measuredindirectly. Conflict may come in different forms and the forms themselves, as well as theextent to which each generates insurgency or patronage, may vary with time andcircumstance. At bottom this is an effort to think differently about these questions and thevariety of evidence that may hold some answers.

Toward a theory of urban conflict: state, economy and society

In the pages that follow, I hope to initiate a theoretical dialog about the conditions, formsand outcomes of urban political conflict in poor and developing countries. That aim isambitious but it grows out of an extensive research literature that seems overdue forcodification of its regional and case study variation. The theory is intentionally generaland a provocation to the venerable empirical tradition that has remained overlydescriptive and localized. The argument proceeds in several steps. First are matters ofdistinction, types of collective action and their institutional contexts. Next the discussionturns to the substance of urban life in poor countries as it is shaped by the intersection ofeconomy, state and civil society. Finally, a number of propositions are derived from thisdiscussion and provide a framework for reviewing critical evidence in the next section.

The first task of any theory is to specify that which is to be explained. The theoreticalobject here is collective action in third world cities — mobilized efforts of large numbersof the urban population to represent their interests, redress grievances, or change policiesthrough claims on the larger society (cf. Tilly, 1978). Collective action may take manyforms ranging from non-compliant acts of everyday resistance (Scott, 1985) to sustainedmovements for reform and revolution (Gugler, 1982; Walton, 1984). For presentpurposes, three types of collective action cover a broad spectrum of popular mobilizationin third world cities while they also make key distinctions often masked in the debate overactivism versusclientism. Labor action includes mobilization arising in the sphere of


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income and employment representing the interests of workers in such concrete repertoiresas strikes, job actions, and demonstrations protesting unemployment or policiesspecifically harmful to labor.Collective consumptionaction includes mobilization byconsumers of urban services, action focused on the availability of collective or publicgoods (e.g. land, housing, transportation, education, health and urban services — water,streets, sewers, electrification) and expressed in actions such as land invasions, squatterprotests and street demonstrations.Political and human rightsaction involves popularmobilization around non-material issues of justice, representation, security, freedom fromrepression and democratization as these are expressed in marches, demonstrations, vigils,hunger strikes and similar acts of conscience.

In the empirical world, of course, these three forms of collective action are oftencompounded. Mass demonstrations protest austerity policies that simultaneously threatento cause unemployment and restrict collective consumption of subsidized food andtransportation. In Mexico, severe economic collapse has resulted in hunger strikes bystreet sweepers invoking their human rights to lost jobs (New York Times, 21 January1997). All this requires that overt acts be analyzed in their complexity, that distinctions bedrawn, polysemic intentions noted, and in the end that certain serviceable categories beemployed. But this is a general problem of observation and classification that should notprevent careful generalization.

A similar threefold distinction refers to theorized influences on collective action. Acomplete understanding of urban political conflict must reckon with the interacting forcesof economic structure, state policy and civil society. Each type of collective action isaffected in specifiable ways by distinct configurations of all these institutional forces.Conversely, no causal privilege is proposed between, for example, labor action and theeconomy to the neglect of state and civil society as decisive, interactive influences — andso forth with respect to each action type.Economic structurerefers to characteristic andrelatively permanent features of the urban economy, such as the sectoral composition ofthe labor force, pattern of industrialization, occupational mobility, formal and informalorganization, employment potential and growth pattern. Thestate, paraphrasing MaxWeber, is the institutional reflection of a community that claims a monopoly of thelegitimate use of force, a compulsory association that enjoys legitimate authority derivedfrom law and tradition. Government represents, but does not exhaust, the presence of thestate in society. The state affects collective action by providing both certain key motivesfor mobilization as well as the channels or means through which collective action isexpressed. The state creates both critical problems and opportunity structures.Civilsocietyis the realm of voluntary association outside the state that draws its authority fromculture rather than laws of government or the market. Civil society in the third world cityis represented by neighborhood associations, squatter organizations, religious societies,groups of women and mothers, regional and ethnic associations. Theorizing about trendsand types of urban collective action begins with an analysis of developments in each ofthese realms and their interrelationships.

The changing urban economyResearch has established the generalization that third world urbanization does not followthe historical path of the originally industrialized nations. In Europe and North America,industrialization and urbanization proceeded in tandem — a large working class wasformed in the growing cities (Browning and Roberts, 1990; Gilbert and Gugler, 1992).With some important exceptions, urbanization in the less developed countries has beenassociated with dependent industrialization in which working-class employment expandsonly to a limited degree, national control is compromised by foreign investment,production is capital intensive favoring narrow luxury and export markets, backwardlinkages to new capital goods industries are reduced by imports under unequal terms oftrade, and, in general, labor absorption by industry is low (Arrighi and Saul, 1973;



Cardoso and Faletto, 1979). The result is a pattern variously described as urban involution(McGee, 1967), over urbanization (Bradshaw, 1987), or tertiarization (Evans andTimberlake, 1980) — a pattern whereby the rapidly growing urban population of thirdworld cities is increasingly compressed into an overcrowded commercial-services sector.A finite number of jobs in the tertiary sector is overwhelmed by urban migration andrelatively low levels of industrial employment, producing, in turn, extensive urbanunderemployment, low wages and productivity, brutal competition, income inequalityand poverty. There are, to be sure, important exceptions to this pattern; certain places,such as the newly industrializing countries (NICs), and certain times, such as the importsubstitution industrialization (ISI) phase of the 1960s, that do experience growth of theindustrial labor force. The exceptions are important and suggest particular implicationsfor political conflict.

Table 1 demonstrates contrasting patterns of labor force expansion under differentforms of industrialization using selected countries and years that bracket their experienceof economic growth. The United States represents the classical pattern in which large-scale industrialization beginning in the late nineteenth century generates a substantiallabor force (up to one-third of the total) that holds its own with the shift to a serviceeconomy. Selected Latin American countries whose modern industrialization isconcentrated in a later period show two tendencies. In Colombia and Peru, a pattern ofdependent industrialization appears in which employment in the secondary sectorfails toexpand during years of economic growth and rapid urbanization. Brazil and Mexico, twoLatin American NICs whose development has been exceptional by continental standards,demonstrate moderate employment expansion somewhere between classical anddependent industrialization. Finally, using data from a comparable span of ‘historicaltime’, Taiwan illustrates the dramatic success with which Asian NICs have created

Table 1 Sectoral composition of the labor force under different patterns of industrialization (%)

Country Year Primarya Secondaryb Tertiaryc Total %

United States 1860 59 20 21 1001900 38 30 32 1001950 12 33 55 1001980 3 30 67 100

Colombia 1925 65 17 18 1001965 45 21 34 1001980 34 24 42 100

Peru 1925 61 18 21 1001965 50 19 31 1001980 40 18 42 100

Brazil 1925 68 12 20 1001965 48 20 31 1001980 31 27 42 100

Mexico 1925 70 11 19 1001965 50 22 29 1011980 37 29 34 100

Taiwan 1956 48 18 33 991975 31 34 36 1001988 13 45 41 99

a Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing.b Industry, Construction, Mining.c Service, Commerce, Government.

Sources: Cardoso and Reyna (1968); World Development Report (1986).


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industrial employment. Comparative research supports the observation that dependentindustrialization is by far the most typical of the less developed countries, that ‘the urbanpopulation of Third World nations is expanding too quickly given their level of economicdevelopment’ (Bradshaw, 1987: 236). For example, between 1965 and 1980, theindustrial labor force in Nigeria grew from a mere 10% to12% and in Zimbabwe from 8%to13%, while in the latter services increased from 13% to 34%.

A second established generalization about the urban economy in poor countries is itsdivision into complementary formal and informal sectors (Hart, 1973; Bromley andGerry, 1979; Mingione and Redclift, 1985; Porteset al., 1989). The formal sector isregulated by the state; firms pay taxes and observe minimum-wage guarantees, whileworkers are protected by social security systems and labor law. The informal sector bycontrast operates beyond the reach of state regulation, often in clandestine realms,providing no protection for workers or tax contributions and product standards forsociety. Formal and informal economies are not opposed but mutually reinforcing. Thestate and formal sector firms contract the services of informal workers, while the informalsector subsidizes the formal with low-wage, low-overhead, disposable industrialoutworkers (Birbeck, 1978) and middle-class consumers with low-cost goods andservices (Armstrong and McGee, 1985). Table 2 illustrates the contrast between formaland informal jobs. Since the early 1980s, most of the third world (with some Asianexceptions) has experienced a combination of debt crisis, arrested growth, and diminishedstate regulation adding to pressures for expansion of both the tertiary and informal sector.The result has been increased involution and compression, particularly at the intersectionof tertiary and informal (Roberts, 1994).

During the development decades of the 1960s and 1970s, economic growth in muchof the third world was rapid despite its tendency to generate dependency and growinginternal inequalities (Warren, 1973; Seers, 1981). Urban migrants fortunate enough toobtain any sort of employment, the new ‘labor aristocracy’ in unionized formal-sectorjobs, the growing number of state workers and many a petty entrepreneur all enjoyed asignificant measure of social mobility. Of course, many were not so fortunate tradingrural for urban poverty or sacrificing themselves for the intergenerational mobility of theirchildren. And there were vast cross-national differences. For present purposes theessential observation is that economic growth and social mobility came to a halt after1980 in the wake of debt crisis. A watershed shift from dependent development toneoliberal globalization initiated a new stage of competition and inequality (Roberts,1995; McMichael, 1996).

Mobility has been one of the chief bases of order for the urban populations of the developingworld. The expansion of the urban economies has been, until the 1980s, sufficient to bring a risein living standards for all the population. The rise has, to be sure, been greater for the upper andmiddle classes, but even the poorest segments of the population have, until recently, seen someimprovement. . . This type of social mobility is, however, coming to an end in most parts of thedeveloping world . . . job prospects are not likely to bring much chance of occupational mobility— the major transformations and upgrading of the labor force are over (Roberts, 1993).

Table 2 Profile of urban involution by sectors of the labor force and formality/informality

Primary Secondary Tertiary

Formal Urban farming and Factory and construction Large retail and governmentforest workers, fishers. workers, miners. workers.

Informal Migratory and casual Subcontract and Self-employed, street vendors,labor. outworkers. domestics, drivers.



During periods of development and upward social mobility, people improve their lotin life through urban migration, broader (e.g. family) participation in the labor force, andcareer advancement through the formal economy where income and benefits are greater.Many families do achieve social mobility and prosperity through the informal sector butthe proportionate enjoyment of those gains is far greater in formal employment. Underconditions of arrested or blocked social mobility, low-income urban groups resort to otherstrategies. As Selbyet al. (1990: 108, 120, emphasis added) discovered in a study ofMexican family responses to the debt crisis, because ‘upward economic mobility, orachieving a minimally decent level of living, is not to be attained through careeradvancement . . . the household budget of the ordinary urban Mexican family is geared toexpenditure avoidance, rather than income maximization’.

On the basis of the economy alone, this section suggests a hypothesized generalprinciple of urban collective action in developing societies. During periods of economicgrowth and social mobility, conflict tends to be low, aimed at income maximization, andexpressed in collective action focused chiefly on the institutional channels of labor unionsand political parties. Conversely, in periods of economic crisis and arrested mobility,conflict is high, aimed at collective goods that reduce expenditures, and expressed incollective action by popular mobilization. To the extent that third-world nations suffereconomic dependency and chronic underdevelopment, the latter pattern of conflict andcollective action is more common.

Rise and fall of the developmental stateThroughout the developing and former colonial world the postwar years witnessed thecreation of new states and the expansion of older ones for purposes of economicdevelopment. Indeed, the ‘third world’ was formed in this context of cold-war rivalry,multilateral sponsorship, development assistance and economic incorporation.Developing country governments began to invest in their own economies and regulatethem in the interests of planned growth. State-owned enterprises were established to helpdirect this process, provide economies of scale, assure the development of essentialindustries, and deal on an equal footing with multinational firms. Planned investmentincluded large infrastructure projects — dams, roads, reclamation, electrification andports. Most important, the new ‘developmentalist state’ (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: 143;McMichael, 1996: 39) was distinguished from earlier state forms by its interventioniststrategy through mechanisms to support the social wage and ensure the general welfarewith central planning, social security, health care, workers compensation, minimum wageand trade union rights. The developmental state was capitalist and dependent on trade andaid from western industrial nations, but it also attempted to husband national capital in aset of policies that included import-substitution industrialization, capital and exchangerate controls, industrial protection, and joint investment ventures (Cardoso and Faletto,1979; Rueschemeyer and Evans, 1985; Migdal, 1988; White, 1988).

Consistent with their dependent and capitalist features, developmental statesdisplayed a clear urban bias (Lipton, 1977). Public investment in health, education,architecture, infrastructure and enterprise went disporportionately to the big citiesalongside state and corporate headquarters. Urban bias was implemented through adense network of policy and legislation. For example, developmental states oftenovervalued the exchange rate of national currency in a manner that favored importedconsumption (wage) goods (including food), and disadvantaged (mainly primary-product) exports. Urban consumers were in effect subsidized giving theappearanceofgeneralized development and restraining upward pressures on wages and improvementsin the standard of living (de Janvry, 1981). A social pact was created between the stateand low-income groups based on patron-client exchange — regime support for a set ofurban collective goods and services ranging from land and housing to subsidized foodand public employment (Cornelius, 1975; Ross, 1975). The developmental state


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certainly cultivated other forms of lucrative patronage for upper-income groups, but itsstrategy rested on a new social pact with the growing numbers and political potential ofthe urban poor. For that reason, developmental states reached their fullest expression inthe more democratic nations just as they created pressures for democratizationelsewhere.

During periods of economic growth and generous international lending, developingcountries successfully maintained the welfare state apparatus. For example, many LatinAmerican states adopted national health and social security programs. States weatheredoil price shocks and recession in the 1970s by borrowing heavily to support publicservices and popular consumption. External debt soared, requiring new loans to pay oldones. By the early 1980s, when the international financial system recognized the debtcrisis, urban groups had become accustomed to basic state guarantees. Over the course ofa generation a ‘moral economy of the poor’ (Thompson, 1966) had evolved on thepremise that hard work and political loyalty were rewarded by an urban homestead andemployment opportunity. The social pact prevailed in most instances, althoughdevelopmental states were not averse to repression when demands outpaced the abilityto satisfy many constituents at once. Social inequality and official arrogance weretolerated by the poor majority owing to a combination of force and favor. But the systemwas predicated on reciprocity among interacting participants — stable under theconditions described, but also delicate.

The developmental state and its social pact with low- and moderate-income urbangroups collapsed with debt crises and austerity programs beginning in the early 1980s. Onone hand, states lost the financial capacity to support extensive social welfare and publicemployment. On the other, internationally sponsored structural adjustment programs(SAPs) required as a condition of loan renegotiation that states dismantle precisely theapparatus that made them developmental states: state spending and employment was cut,food and transportation subsidies eliminated, public enterprises privatized, exchange ratesdevalued, protection removed and markets opened to foreign investment. The moraleconomy, on which political stability had rested, collapsed with the debt pyramid,introducing an unprecedented international wave of urban protest (Walton and Seddon,1994).

Reasoning on the basis of state formation alone, this section suggests the hypothesisthat urban collective action is restrained, focused on divisible goods, and institutionallychanneled when developmental states enter into material and moral agreements togenerate and share the fruits of economic growth. Conflict escalates, focuses on collectivegoods, and is expressed in popular action repertoires when the state neglects or withdrawssocial welfare. A moral economy that is created and subsequently violated generates moreconflict than do weak states with desultory development policies. The developmentalstate had expanded political opportunity through the social pact which gave rights tolabor, encouraged local associations, and widened the electoral franchise. Like the moraleconomy, these means of collective action constitute a legacy for conflict during fiscalcrises.

The growth of civil societyCivil society, Gramsci’s ‘social trenches’ on the battlefield of popular struggle, is acharacteristic feature of urban society in poor countries. A large literature on migrantadaptation to the city repeatedly emphasizes the role of voluntary local organizations inassisting new arrivals with housing, employment and self-defense (Little, 1965; Gilbertand Gugler, 1992). Many of the classic ethnographies of city life — from Oscar Lewis’s(1952) ‘urbanization without breakdown’ in Mexican housing blocks to Clyde Mitchell’s(1956) Kalela dance societies that integrate urban migrants in Zambia — focus on thediversity and vitality of civil society. The classics are elaborated in a rich monographicliterature that describes, for example, the resourcefulness of migrant communities in



Cairo (Abu-Lughod, 1964), neighborhood associations in Guatemala City (Roberts,1973), tribal unions in Jos, Nigeria (Plotnicov, 1967), squatter settlements in Lima, Peru(Mangin, 1967), and ethnic and women’s associations in Ibadan, Nigeria (Cohen, 1969).If the early literature on urban civil society was dominated by accounts of regional,ethnic, squatter and cultural associations, recent studies demonstrate a changing profilewith the addition of religious groups such as Christian base communities (Levine andMainwaring, 1989) and Muslim Brotherhoods (Lubeck, 1985), women’s groups (Jelin,1987; Lind, 1992), human rights organizations (Eckstein 1989), and ecology groups(Garcia, 1992).

Both the type and the overall intensity of civil society appear to vary over time.Students of squatter movements frequently observe that organizational activity is at itspeak just prior to land invasions and during the initial months or years of petitioning thestate for land titles (‘regularization’) and urban services. But success breeds complacency.As squatter communities develop physically and resident incomes rise, organizationdeclines, political militancy evaporates, and clientism shades into self-satisfaction.(Mangin, 1967; Turner, 1967; Gilbert and Gugler, 1992).

Yet there are important qualifications of this generalization. Periods of quiescencemay also have their limits and cycles. After having written one of the classical studies ofstate domination in Mexico City neighborhoods, Susan Eckstein (1977) was afforded theopportunity for a before-after experimental design in a re-study following the majorearthquake of 1985. Despite earlier appearances of co-optation and apathy, when theinner-city community was threatened by government plans for demolition andgentrification, people organized in vital and creative ways to save the neighborhood.‘The successful mobilization for housing gives credence to the thesis that protestmovements among the economically and politically weak are especially likely to occurwhen [communities] with social and cultural bonds experience sudden economicdeprivation, when they lack attractive alternatives to ‘exit’ and seek individual solutionsto their plight, and when they have the support of ‘better situated’ individuals and groups’(Eckstein, 1990: 294). After a petroleum explosion destroyed significant portions of anold neighborhood in Guadalajara, another re-study demonstrated similar revitalization ofcommunity organizations and new alliances with professional support groups, albeit withfewer political victories (Shefner and Walton, 1993).

If this establishes that urban collective action arising from civil society is cyclical,then we must pursue the conditions (beyond disasters) under which new mobilizationsmay recapture the halcyon days of squatter invasions and urban service demands. The lastfew years have seen a flowering of work on social movements in poor countries(Eckstein, 1989; Escobar and Alvarez, 1992; Wignaraja, 1993), much debate overwhether they are ‘new’ movements or simply evolving and reconstituted versions of oldertypes (Knight, 1990; Calhoun, 1993), but considerable agreement on the essential pointthat from the 1980s onward a new wave of urban political mobilization has occurred.Focusing on Sa˜o Paulo, Paul Singer (1982) describes ‘new barrio movements’ forsquatters, human rights, and a cost-of-living campaign, all linked with Christian basecommunities. Singer’s movements explicitly reject the ‘politica de clientel’ identifyingpatron-client ties not simply as a slippery slope to co-optation but as intrinsicallydefeating of equity and empowerment. The political consciousness of new socialmovements is both keenly aware and highly critical of clientism. Local organizationshave repudiated their patrons, their own co-opted leaders, and split over the difference(Velez-Ibanez, 1983).

The hypothesized causes of these movements are not far from hand. Friedmann andSalguero (1988: 3) write about a ‘new activism of civil society . . . a barrio movement forcollective self-empowerment’ rooted in household and neighborhood economies andcomprised of soup kitchens, housing cooperatives, locally controlled markets and similaralternative arrangements.


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In Latin America, this resurgence of civil society in the public domain has had specificproximate causes: the utter inability of the modern production sectors to provide a sufficientlivelihood for any but a minor fraction of the working population and a state whose repeatedattempts at countervailing policies have proved ineffective even as it has, in country aftercountry, applied the stern principle ofmano dura to shore up its crumbling authority(Friedmann and Salguero, ibid.).

The new wave of social movements stems from the failure of the economy to providematerially for the majority of citizens and state recourse to repression in the absence ofradical political solutions. Escobar and Alvarez (1992: 1) add specificity to thisexplanation, citing debt crisis, punishing structural adjustment, declining living standards,‘in sum a reversal of development’.

The issue here, however, is neither economic decline nor state withdrawal, but theevolution and reassertion of civil society under these conditions. Urban groups turn toinstitutions of civil society that now provide the only organized, collective alternative foreconomic self-defense and redressing political action. Civil society has been evolvingwith urbanization in the form of varied mechanisms for coping with mundane affairs —church groups of women and households, cooperative associations of street vendors,independent labor unions, housing cooperatives and many more that appear as new actorsin recent ethnographies (Ve´lez-Ibanez, 1983; Lubeck, 1986; Gay, 1990; Stokes, 1995).

Reasoning from the standpoint of civil society alone, organizationally developedsolutions for coping with urban life are adopted by popular groups as the stateincreasingly withdraws into privatization and deregulation. Energies of the older moraleconomy are reinvested in civil society, including its conventional and newly evolvedorganizational methods. Political opportunity structures initially created or encouraged bythe developmental state (neighborhood associations, elections, labor confederations,human settlements’ ministries) are appropriated by their civil society constituents as thestate retreats. Collective action expressed through social movements and the rights ofcitizens increases. Democratization becomes the ethic and instrument of groupsindependent of the state.

Theoretical summaryThis analysis rests on two premises woven together in a context of changing substantiveconditions. Explanation of collective action in third world cities begins with a heuristictypology of labor, collective consumption and political rights as distinct, interrelatedforms. Collective action forms are shaped mainly by developments over time in theeconomy, state and civil society. A set of hypotheses about the timing, form and intensityof collective action connects the two premises. Both the types of collective action and theinstitutional arenas interact in a complex of reciprocal and causal relations.

Labor, collective consumption, and political rights action are each affected byconfigurations of state, economy and civil society influences. These patternedconfigurations change with time and developmental phases (see Figure 1). Labor action,for example, is closely associated with changes in the economy and especially growthphases, but the state plays a role by defining the rights of capital and labor, and civilsociety contributes as in the case of cultural groups that enable the mobilization andresistance of Bolivian tin miners (Nash, 1989) or Islamic societies that support strikes andunionization in Nigeria (Lubeck, 1986). Collective consumption action is institutionallyfocused, in the main, orchestrated by the state and state provision of public goods, but it isintensified by economic decline and inequality, and civil society provides its means ofexpression as in the case of women’s groups that organize austerity protests (Daines andSeddon, 1994). Political and human rights action is born in civil society but dependsfundamentally on changes in state formation, enfranchisement and repression, and oneconomic policy, such as recent neoliberal reforms that facilitate democratizationmovements (Walton and Seddon, 1994). Forms of collective action may follow



independent trajectories such as cycles of labor protest (Shorter and Tilly, 1974), just asperiods of unusual stress may confound various action types — an argument pursuedbelow in the recent experience of poor countries.

Propositions and evidence

The foregoing theoretical framework allows derivation of a number of propositions, someof which are developed here in light of pertinent evidence. The principal limitation onrigorous theory testing, of course, is a relative dearth of empirical evidence that measuresurban conflict in developing countries in a valid, reliable, systematic, comparative andlongitudinal fashion.

To date, studies of urban politics in developing countries have failed to distinguish,separately measure and compare different forms of conflict. Indeed, they have reachedgross judgements about that process under the doubtful assumption that the phenomenonwas homogeneous and monotonic. The problem is not relieved by inventive measures ofurban conflict. Forms of labor conflict such as strikes have been measured comparativelybut in widely varying ways. Published data on strikes and lockouts by the InternationalLabor Office (1994), for example, depend on the self-reporting of countries with differentlabor laws and policies, while academic studies of the timing and frequency of laborunrest employ newspaper reports of labor agitation (Silver, 1995). Although it is difficultto imagine how else labor conflict might be measured comparatively, the methods areflawed and these two procedures alone generate somewhat inconsistent results. Forms ofconflict over collective consumption such as illegal property invasions and squattersettlements have been universally documented but never measured comparatively.Generally, we are not now in a position to make definitive tests of hypotheses about urbanconflict. Yet progress requires that we formulate tractable propositions, and with them inmind begin to explore a variety of suggestive data sources. The results will remaintentative but they may provide good analytical leads and ideas for better measures. Thefollowing eight propositions are a start.

1. In broad outline, urban problems in developing societies have been more typicallymediated by patron-client relations rather than by popular activism.

As we have seen, the argument for this proposition is two-fold. First, clientism offers aless costly alternative for redress of grievances that suits the purposes of both the state andthe urban poor. Second, it has worked effectively in times of state expansion and urban

Periods

Major Influences Early Urbanization Developmental State Neoliberalism(ca. 1930–60) (ca. 1960–80) (ca. 1980!)

Conflict generally Conflict moderate to Conflict moderate toEconomy ! low. Collective high. Collective high. Collective

action mainly action focused on action focused onfocused on labor collective political rights and

State ! issues and individual consumption and collectivevs. collective goods. labor. Institutionally consumption.Political relations channeled political Growing popular

Civil Society ! based on craft and relations. movementsrural traditions. independent of state.

Figure 1 Summary of collective action patterns by major influences and periods of development


470 John Walton

social mobility. The first and most obvious place to look for evidence of this propositionis in characterizations of urban political action by close observers. How do authors of thestandard reference works answer this question? Joan Nelson’s (1979: 383) comprehensivebook, subtitled ‘Politics and the urban poor in developing nations’, identifies four‘patterns of participation’, ethnic associations, political parties, special interest groupsand patron-client links, the latter being ‘the most universal’. In a more recent review ofthis research, Gilbert and Gugler (1992: 180) conclude that the ‘recurrent theme’ is thepolitics of co-optation. Roberts (1995: 194) notes that ‘there were several factors makingpolitical and civil rights [conflict] less salient in Latin America during the period ofimport-substitution industrialization from the 1940s to the 1970s. Chief amongst them, Isuggest, was the social mobility that accompanied urbanization and economicdevelopment’. Additional, direct evidence for this hypothesis follows in connection withsubsequent propositions.

2. Collective action, when it does take place, is more likely to occur in the form ofcollective consumption and less often in the forms of labor (e.g. strikes) or political rights(e.g. social movements) contests.

The logic behind this proposition is straightforward. Material welfare is uppermost in theintentions of migrant and rapidly urbanizing populations. In the cities of developingsocieties, large segments of the population experience chronic poverty with limited(geographical and intergenerational rather than individual) mobility opportunities. To theextent that these groups are absorbed into the urban economy, it is principally through theunderemployed informal tertiary sector where protest organizations (e.g. trade unions)and repertoires (e.g. strikes) are in the main not present. Neighborhoods and communitiesare the more common locus of mobilized action and urban services are the currency ofpolitical exchange — public goods such as water, electricity and transportation thatimprove the material condition of households by reducing their expenditures.

Turning once more to reviews of the evidence as evidence, expert opinion isremarkably consistent. In Africa, Piel and Sada (1984: 265, 342) observe that industrialworkers are conservative, collective action is covert and ‘though radical outbursts occurthey tend to be rare’. Political participation finds other expressions, ‘individuals andgroups are probably most active at the defensive and allocative levels, in appealing for oragainst government action or proposed action (e.g. a request for a new market or againstthe destruction of a squatter settlement)’. In Latin America:

the cross section of the urban population offered by squatter and other settlements can becompared to advantage with that provided, for example, by trade unions. In the transitionaleconomies of Latin America, established industrial, construction, and transportation workers —especially those belonging to unions — represent a much restricted sector. . . Lower-classsettlements not only represent the most varied and highly focalized cross-section of the urbanpoor but also, and perhaps most importantly, embody the most vital manifestations of theirpolitical action. Organized land invasions, to cite only the best known case, represent viableinstances of political struggle . . . rather than occupational or income needs, it is the demand forhousing that has most effectively politicized the poor (Portes and Walton, 1976: 74).

Comparative studies concur. Drakakis-Smith (1987: 51–2) observes that politicalmovements of the urban poor are usually expressed in ‘non-institutional’ forms such asrent strikes or squatting rather than through institutional channels provided by tradeunions and political parties. ‘The more institutional options are often the least effectiveform of action. . . Trade unions can be very ineffective vehicles for political protest by thepoor, few of whom have the sort of employment which leads to union membership. . . Asa result of this ineffectiveness, many of the urban poor have recourse to less ‘acceptable’methods of involvement. . . The most visible type of action in this context is perhaps the



seizure of land by squatters’. Finally, Gilbert and Gugler (1992: 192, 200) note threepatterns of political conflict; among them ‘a broad, class-conscious movement of workersis very much the exception’, while struggle for land is ‘the most conspicuous politicalaction of the urban masses’ and street demonstrations, riots and insurrections play animportant role.

A corollary to this proposition is that collective consumption action is motivated bythe efforts of individuals and households with few opportunities to improve their situationby increasing their income and so a preference for minimizing expenses. Case studyevidence supports this interpretation. Urban movements in South African black townshipsarose in response to government rent increases ‘seen as a reduction in the social wage’(Reintges, 1990: 117). Recently, some of the mixed-race townships rioted over anincrease in utility rates by the new government which confronted a ‘culture of non-payment’ that has persisted since apartheid — ‘some of the problem is simply poverty,but some is that people got used to not paying and do not want to add another expense toalready tight budgets’ (New York Times, 7 February 1997). The evidence on austerityprotests reviewed below is amenable to the same reading.

3. Although not the most common form of collective action, labor conflict does occur,notably in the ‘middle years’ of economic growth and state expansion.

4. Collective action by labor is more common in the Asian NICs and, to a lesser extent, inthe several countries of Africa and Latin America with a tradition of industry and tradeunions.

5. In periods of economic decline and withdrawal of the developmental state, collectiveaction by labor recedes in favor of collective consumption struggles.

These three propositions are presented together owing to their obvious interrelation andbecause they are effectively addressed by the same data sets. Familiar reasoning suggeststhat periods of first-wave urbanization, economic growth, developmental state formationand social mobility are conducive to institutional forms of collective action. Conversely,later waves of urbanization, economic downturn, reduced levels of state support andimmobility produce a greater frequency of collective consumption action. Of course, landinvasions and demands for urban-services have occurred during periods of state andeconomic expansion. The argument here is that conflict centered on collectiveconsumption has in recent years increased to rival and sometimes supplant clientismand institutional forms of action.

Figure 2 combines in graphic form cross-national longitudinal data on labor disputesand austerity protests. The data are partial and no doubt more suggestive thanconfirmatory. In self-reported data about conflict, countries may underestimate andnational definitions of what constitutes a recognized strike or lockout vary. Yet these datado provide a rare attempt at compiling comparative evidence on urban conflict and maygain credibility when triangulated with other case-study and secondary material. In thefigure, trends in the frequency of strikes and lockouts compiled by the International LaborOffice (ILO) are presented for three representative countries chosen for purposes ofintercontinental comparison. Inspection of the ILOYearbook of labor statistics(1994) forvarious nations and years suggests that the patterns in Figure 2 are typical. Not all strikesare urban, requiring certain provisos in the interpretation of these data. The ILO hasrecently begun to disaggregate strikes by economic activity, allowing a focus on moretypically urban manufacturing and services, but the distinctions are not provided for thefull time series. In any case, the pattern in recent figures is similar for the manufacturingand the total of all forms, suggesting that long-term totals for all strike activity can beused as a proxy for temporal changes in urban labor action.


472 John Walton

In support of proposition three, the data show a relatively low level of labor actionduring the early years of growth and urbanization in the 1960s, followed by a significantrise in the mid-1970s when labor has established its political power within the growingstate and economy. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, labor protest does not diminishwith the economic crisis of the 1980s but reasserts itself during the initial period ofausterity and then declines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The proposition requiresreformulation, emphasizing that the cycles of different forms of urban conflict are notnecessarily asynchronic but may coincide, as we shall see momentarily.

Figure 3 provides similar comparisons with the added contrast between representativedeveloping countries (Peru and Nigeria) and two NICs (India and Brazil). The datasupport proposition four. Although the Brazil data do not cover the early period, ingeneral terms the pattern shows lower levels in the 1960s, two peaks in the 1970s and1980s, and sharp decline in the 1990s. As expected, the NICs show much higher levels ofstrike activity. Further support for proposition four is demonstrated in data (also reportedby the ILO) that employ the number of workers involved or worker days lost rather thanthe absolute number of strikes. In NICs such as South Korea, large industrialconglomerates with vast numbers of employees may have relatively few strikes butthose that do occur are huge. Korean society was brought to a standstill in late 1996 andearly 1997 when the government attempted to legislate a new labor law that would havecompromised union power and permitted wide layoffs. As many as 350,000 workersstaged a general strike lasting several weeks and provoking a governmental crisis whichthe trade unions eventually won (New York Times, 28 December 1996). Such labormilitance is unthinkable in most of the developing world.

Turning to proposition five, the task of identifying or creating comparativelongitudinal data on collective consumption action is formidable. Standard nationalaccounts do not address the question and social scientists have yet to devise usefulindices. We must look for proxy measures and case-study alternatives. A reasonableindicator of collective consumption action is the frequency and intensity of ‘austerityprotests’ in the form of demonstrations, strikes and riots over the past twenty years that

Figure 2 Labor disputes for selected countries and austerity protest (sources: InternationalLabor Office Yearbooks; Walton and Seddon, 1994)



are specifically aimed at changes in public policy that eliminate food and transportationsubsidies, threaten mass unemployment, increase the cost of living, and otherwisethreaten the urban poor as a class of victims. The only available sources of comparativequantitative data on austerity protest are contemporary newspaper accounts, although thevalidity of these descriptions can be verified through more extensive case studies ofspecific instances (Walton and Ragin, 1990; Walton and Seddon, 1994). The measure isnot pure in that some of the actions it includes are sponsored by labor confederations,usually in alliance with churches and oppositional parties, and could be defined as laborprotest. Yet the measure is conceptually resonant with collective consumption because itenumerates protests over the elimination of public goods on behalf of the urban poor as awhole. Other evidence on the incidence of urban social movements complements thepattern of austerity protest, adding the plausibility of multiple indicators.

The data in Figure 4 show the trajectory of anti-austerity demonstrations, strikes, andIMF riots since their inception in response to SAPs in the mid-1970s. There is a clearrelationship with cost-of-living changes and, when austerity protest data aresuperimposed on Figure 2 (the boldface line at the lower right of the graph), a newfinding appears. In support of proposition five, collective consumption action asmeasured by austerity protest increases during the years of economic crisis and statewithdrawal. But contrary to expectations, labor protest does not recede, at least notinitially in the crisis years of the 1980s — labor and collective consumption actionincrease in tandem and, no doubt, in mutually reinforcing ways. Here the ‘crisis years’encompass roughly a decade beginning in 1982, although a number of countries (e.g.Mexico) have experienced renewed crises rather than any relief and should be understoodas victims of one long crisis continuing to the present. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s (inFigures 2 and 3) labor conflict does decline as austerity protest resurges and then levelsoff to maintain an appreciable presence in the mid-1990s. Stated differently, debt crisesand austerity protest reached their highest sustained levels from 1982–92 and in somecountries have persisted ever since, sometimes (e.g. in the 1980s) in association withlabor conflict.

Further evidence of a rise in collective consumption action during economic and statedecline comes from case studies of urban social movements. Urban movements have beenobserved in a wide variety of countries (Castells, 1983; Mayer, 1987; Wignaraja, 1993;

Figure 3 Labor disputes in selected developing countries and NICs (source: International LaborOffice Yearbooks)


474 John Walton

Foweraker, 1995) but in the case of Mexico, a number of observers have scrutinized thedevelopment of a nationally coordinated Urban Popular Movement (MUP) — a looseassembly of grassroots groups organized around housing, urban services, social welfareand cost-of-living issues. Although none of the observers has attempted a quantitativeanalysis of the movement, all of them identify periods of initiation, growth, repression,reversal and resurgence. The early years of this century witnessed rent strikes and anti-foreign riots (Mundo, 1976; Durand, 1984; Tamayo, 1988; Knight, 1990; Bloch andOrtoll, 1996), but no sustained social movement on a national scale until the rise andsuppression of the student movement in 1968. In the aftermath, an urban popularmovement appeared in the early 1970s, suffered setbacks but expanded from 1979–83,and then flourished in the late 1980s under the combined encouragement of earthquakereparations, state cutbacks and a serious new challenge to one-party rule in 1988. Theearly 1990s saw some waning of social movement initiatives, although local groupspersevere and continue looking for new national openings (Moctezuma, 1984; Carr andMontoya, 1986; Ramirez Sa´iz, 1989; Coulomb, 1991; Bennett, 1992; Shefner, 1997). Thekey point about timing is that this periodization coincides neatly with the pattern ofausterity protests (viz. growth in the 1970s, peaks in the early and late 1980s, andcontinuation to the present). The complementarity of austerity protest and socialmovement evidence lends stronger support to proposition five.

6. Collective consumption action is associated with the pattern of urban involution(overurbanization) of the informal tertiary sector of the labor force.

Firm evidence for this proposition comes from the quantitative cross-national study ofausterity protest (Walton and Ragin, 1990). Overurbanization, measured by the ‘excess’

Figure 4 Austerity protests by year and consumer price increases, 1976–96 (n = 166) (sources:International Labor Office Yearbooks; Walton and Seddon, 1994)



to which a country is urbanized by contrast to its economic development (in light of theaverage levels for all developing countries) gets at the problem of an urban population toolarge for its own capacity to provide employment. Overurbanization is highly correlatedwith the incidence and severity of austerity protest and figures importantly (along withIMF pressures for debt repayment) in regression models that predict protest.

7. Political and human rights action is associated with periods of state formation andradical restructuring such as the recent international initiative for neoliberal economicand political reform.

Evidence for this proposition is elusive, particularly when collective action is referred tothe urban setting, and no firm conclusions are possible at the moment. It is, however,important that the argument be formulated and suggestive evidence identified. On onehand, collective action on behalf of political rights is a distinct type that helps clarifymatters generally in its contrast to labor and collective consumption. On the other hand,some evidence and interpretation suggest that action around political and human rights inthe developing countries has become central in recent years. One indirect measure of thisnew activity is the number of human rights monitoring groups operating around the world(Amnesty International, 1996; Human Rights Watch, 1996).

Paradoxical on the surface, the period of economic crisis and reform begun in theearly 1980s has helped promote a new and global movement of democratization. Theexplanation for this somewhat unexpected development lies in the interplay of nationaland international constraints. From the international side: structural adjustment programshave weakened former mechanisms of state co-optation and coercion, neoliberal ideologysupports a limited bourgeois state, post-cold war geopolitics no longer require stableauthoritarian states, and global competition for capital compels states to pursuedemocratic harmony and investor stability. From the national standpoint: less developedcountries constrained by fiscal austerity can no longer afford clientism, greater popularsovereignty is a condition that citizens expect in exchange for austerity, civil societythrives under these conditions, and new social movements for democracy rise to thestructural opportunity (Walton and Seddon, 1994).

Turning to the evidence, democratization is of course a movement of long historicalpedigree. In a new periodization of ‘waves of democracy’, Markoff (1996) noteseighteenth- and nineteenth-century revolutionary state formations and then focuses on themuch more democratically eventful twentieth century. Three periods appear: a‘democratic surge’ from 1910–25 (in postwar Europe and Mexico, Turkey, Japan,etc.), followed after a hiatus by post-second world war freedoms in Europe and thedecolonizing world (e.g. India), and finally what Markoff (1996: 80) calls the ‘newest andgreatest wave of democratization’ beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present,marked notably by new popular regimes in eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.Closer observation supports this conclusion with recent developments at the regionallevel. Lubeck (1992: 536) describes a:

revival of popular democratic participation expressed in food riots, strikes by workers, anddemands by professional and middle class for elections [which one author calls] ‘Africa’ssecond independence’. . . Indeed, an astonishing number of popular movements have arisen todemand political change in one-party states ranging from Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Togo,Benin, Cameroon, Mali, Kenya, Zambia, and Zaire [that] represent the emergence of a newgenerational force demanding democracy, human rights, and the resolution of economic andsocial crisis.

The wave of democratization movements continues. By the mid-1990s, Lubeck’sAfrican list could be extended to include Niger, Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana and SouthAfrica. Important movements appeared also in Asia (Philippines, Nepal, South Korea,


476 John Walton

Thailand, Bangladesh, East Timor and Indonesia) and Latin America (Haiti, Mexico,Venezuela and Guatemala — all after 1980s’ transitions from authoritarianism in Brazil,Chile and Argentina). The summer of 1997 witnessed surprisingly parallel protests insupport of democratic elections and against constitutional manipulations of the franchisein Peru, Kenya and the Philippines. And it must be added that the locus of all thesemovements is almost invariably in urban areas and structures of civil society. Althoughthe new democratization movement calls for more systematic and comparative-historicalanalysis, ample case study evidence and expert opinion support the proposition.

8. Forms of urban collective action occur in cycles that obey particular causal influences,but they also converge under unusual or extreme circumstances.

Drawing on all of the evidence presented so far, the point here is twofold. First, nosuggestion of linear or evolutionary change is supported. Each type of action was found towax and wane in cycles with distinct constellations of economic, political and culturalcauses (Tarrow, 1993). At times, a given form of collective action may thrive in theabsence of others, capturing, in effect, the mobilized energies of the moment. But cyclesconverge, in this instance particularly the cycles of labor, collective consumption anddemocratization action brought about by the unusually severe depredations of debt crisisand structural adjustment during the 1980s. While demonstrating a pattern, the data alsocaution against simple causal interpretations.

Conclusion

The theoretical argument developed here addresses the rich monographic literature onurbanization, community and politics in developing countries. It attempts to codify thatresearch and, particularly, to move beyond perennial debates between clientism andradicalism. A basic distinction between types of collective action clarifies matters at theoutset by suggesting circumstances under which, say, labor action may flourish whilecollective consumption or political action is restrained. Further clarification anddifferentiation are provided with recognition of a cycle in the urbanization process thatmay involve mobility and satisfaction at one stage followed by involution anddegradation at another. Formulation of these arguments as propositions helps specifycontroversial questions and bring them into contact with available evidence. Althoughthat evidence is not always perfectly apposite, it does exist to a greater extent than isnormally exploited, it answers some questions quite well, and where complementarymeasures can be found it provides stronger tests. Above all, the propositions and data setsdemonstrate, first, engaging differences in patterns of urban conflict that invite robustinterpretation, and, second, contemporary events that are unfolding rapidly with greattheoretical and practical significance for the vast urban population of poor countries.

Any theory that is clear about its explanatory aims may be summarized in a fewwords. We have argued that the urban poor are social actors who conduct their lives in aneconomic, political and cultural milieu. They reasonably take satisfaction from movesthat improve their standard of living and, if not constitutionally conservative, preferclientele exchange to conflict as long as it is effective and fair. Against this backdrop,however, conflict is endemic to third world cities whether it originates in repressive statesor rebellious communities. The essential point is that collective action derives from theinteraction of state, economy and civil society — aggrieved groups mobilize culturallyand engage the state in strategic ways. Occasionally they even succeed.

John Walton ([email protected]), Department of Sociology, University ofCalifornia, Davis, CA 95616, USA.



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