Informal Economies and Urban Governance in Nigeria
Popular Empowerment or Political Exclusion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2431802 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kate Meagher (0000-0001-9859-0827, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 47-72 |
| Publication date | 2011-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1353/arw.2011.0026 |
| OpenAlex | W2094453238 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 36 |
| References cited | 49 |
This article examines how popular organizational strategies and coping mechanisms affect broader trajectories of urban governance in contemporary Africa. Does the proliferation of informal livelihood networks and associations foster economic empowerment and popular political participation, or do these informal processes breed poverty and organizational chaos? This article explores the link between popular organizational strategies and structural outcomes, focusing on how institutional process and power relations shape the access of the poor to resources and decision-making structures in decentralizing urban environments. Case studies from Nigeria trace how liberalization has fragmented informal organizational strategies into networks of accumulation and survival that tend to marginalize the interests of the poor within informal enterprise associations. Distinctive political strategies of informal enterprise associations are analyzed to show why dynamic informal organization is unable to break through the barriers of social and legal marginalization that trap the urban poor in cliental forms of political incorporation. This suggests that "social capital" within the informal economy may fail to improve popular political representation and governance outcomes even in contexts of decentralization
Corporate governance · Decentralization · Development economics · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Empowerment · Informal organization · Informal sector · Livelihood · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Social capital · Social science · Sociology · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Taxation and Compliance Studies · Urban and Rural Development Challenges
The Relationship between Jobs and Social Cohesion
The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change
Harnessing the Potential of Nigeria’s Creative Industries
Strength in Numbers or Collective Frailty? The Organizational Capacity of Microenterprises
Les arts de faire bureaucratique(s) de Nollywood. Guildes, associations, (in)formalisations et légitimation d’un cinéma nigérian
Covid-19 pandemic and informal women workers in peri-urban communities in Nigeria
Offline contexts of online jobs
Social participation in city governance and urban livelihoods
“We Are Good at Surviving”
The Problems of the Discretionary Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) in the Ruo Emoh Housing Project
Taxing the Informal Economy
Decolonial informal urban futures
Rethinking the sustainable livelihoods framework
Beyond grid connection
Regional integration from “below” in West Africa
Informal economy and economic security among women engaging in Ogi production in selected rural communities in Kwara state, Nigeria
Securing Livelihoods in Africa
The hustle economy
Informal trading and spatial competitiveness in African Cities
Urban governance and urban food systems in Africa
The State of African Cities 2010
Business as family, family as business
Innovation in informal settings
Informal Waste Management in Africa
Digitizing Taxation and Premature Formalization in Developing Countries
Factors and remedies for productivity and efficiency among small-scale informal enterprises
No Condition Is Permanent
Making plans through people
Eyes, Ears, and Wheels
Covid-19 Pandemic and Informal Urban Governance in Africa
Informal Exceptionalism?' Labour Migrants' Creative Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Livelihoods in Accra, Ghana
Marginality as a politics of limited entitlements
The Ethiopian developmental state and struggles over the reproduction of young migrant women's labor at the Hawassa Industrial Park
Spatial politics and gendered strategies
"Hybrid Governance," Legitimacy, and (Il)legality in the Informal Cross-Border Trade in Panyimur, Northwest Uganda
Asr Forum
Africa works
Associational Life in African Cities
Industrial districts and local economic regeneration
Enterprise in Africa
Identity Economics
Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes
Planet of Slums
Trade without rulers
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
The Criminalization of the State in Africa
Women leaders and the sense of power
MSE associations and enterprise promotion in Africa
Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal
Palm Oil and Protest
The Advance of African Capital
Walking the Tightrope
Reconsidering Informality
Agra
Government action, social capital and development
Palm Oil and Protest
Reducing Vulnerability to Natural Disasters
Small Firms, the Informal Sector, and the Devil's Deal
Hemmed In
Regime transformation from below
A History of the Igbo People
Making Democracy Work
Social capital, social liabilities, and political capital
Craft Industries in Ilorin
Trade Without Rulers
For the City Yet to Come
The asset vulnerability framework
Africa's informal workers
Social capital or analytical liability? Social networks and African informal economies
Hijacking civil society
Manufacturing Disorder
Social Capital and the Global Economy
The Strength of Weak Ties
People as Infrastructure
The Strength of Weak Ties
| Unique citing works | 36 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,57 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 36 |