Research

Publications

Fuchs, Federico (2023). “Competition, Cooperation, and Influence in the Informal Economy: Interest Representation in Informal Markets in Mexico City”, Comparative Politics, Available here.

Although informal markets are one of the main sources of employment for informal workers in developing economies and hubs of collective action, we know little about the economic and political activity that happens within them. While standard approaches to collective action would suggest that a greater level of organization should be associated with either a greater level of influence for this often relegated group or a lesser capacity to achieve collective goals, this paper proposes that neither is the case. Because of the specific conditions in which collective action ensues in this setting, there is a non-linear relation between organizational density (the number of organizations representing a single constituency) and effective claim-making around common objectives. Thus, informal workers’ capacity to demand resources from the government is best served by intermediate levels of organizational density, when organizations experience enough competition to make them responsive to their constituencies, but not so much that internal strife undermines their effectiveness in securing shared objectives. To test this argument, I leverage a mixed-methods approach to examine the case of informal workers’ organizational behavior in public and street markets in Mexico City. I exploit original data from an expert survey I conducted in 99 randomly sampled markets in Mexico City and complement the econometric results with a qualitative narrative from a street market in Iztacalco, Mexico City, that illustrates the mechanisms behind the theory. These qualitative insights are based on 100 semi-structured and short, open-ended interviews with public officials, leaders, and informal workers, and participant observation in markets’ daily life and collective meetings. I find evidence that markets with medium levels of organizational density are the most capable of gathering resources from local governments and that the dynamics of competition and cooperation suggested by the theory are at play: competition steadily increases as organizational density rises, while cooperation initially improves among a few organizations, but declines when organizational density is high.

Working Papers

Collective Action, Policy Preferences and Redistribution in the Informal Economy (under review)

Informal workers constitute over fifty percent of the world’s non-agricultural labor force, yet their policy preferences and the role of collective action in shaping these preferences remain understudied. This paper addresses this gap by examining how informal-sector organizations influence workers’ access to policy benefits and redistributive preferences. It theorizes that collective action through organizations enables informal workers to overcome informal barriers—such as bureaucratic obstacles and weak institutional enforcement—to access state-provided benefits. Consequently, organizational participation shapes workers’ attitudes toward redistribution, making them more supportive of state intervention but also potentially more tolerant of poor governance and politically mediated resource allocation. Utilizing original ethnographically-informed survey data from informal retail workers in Mexico City, this study explores the relationship between organizational participation, benefit access, and attitudes toward redistributive policies. Findings indicate that participants in informal-sector organizations are significantly more likely—13.2 percentage points—to access policy benefits and are 21.3 percentage points more supportive of redistributive policies compared to non-participants. However, this enhanced access is facilitated largely through organizational mediation exploiting discretionary, politically-mediated allocation processes and weak institutional quality. Consequently, members of informal-sector organizations show indifference towards rule-based policy instruments and anti-corruption measures. In contrast, members of other organizations, less dependent on political mediation, strongly prefer rule-based programs (by a margin of 30 percentage points) and anti-corruption initiatives (by a margin of 39 percentage points). These findings demonstrate that collective action is a double-edged sword: while it effectively enhances informal workers’ access to scarce policy benefits and increases their support for redistribution, it simultaneously reduces their demand for improved governance and transparency.

European Works Councils After Three Decades: Outlining a Research Agenda, with Marco Hauptmeier and Patrick Witzak (under review)

The European Works Council (EWC) Directive was adopted in 1994, and since then, a substantial body of empirical research has emerged. As the institution approaches its 30th anniversary, this article provides a comprehensive review of the most cited literature on EWCs to assess the current state of knowledge and to identify key research gaps. While existing studies have examined the legal evolution of the Directive, its implementation at company level, and the strategic positioning of labour actors, recent socio-political developments—including Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the European Commission’s 2024 reform proposal—have created new institutional dynamics that remain insufficiently analysed. The article presents a systematic literature review based on a hybrid methodology that combines conventional database searches with AI-supported citation tracking. The resulting sample includes 244 peer-reviewed publications from 1992 to 2024, with a particular emphasis on the previously underexplored period between 2014 and 2024. However, recent evidence highlights four persistent challenges: regulatory asymmetries in the implementation of Directive 2009/38/EC, continued managerial strategies that limit effective consultation, structural barriers to transnational coordination, and a marked underrepresentation of sectors such as services and IT. The legal and operational implications of Brexit, particularly for UK-based subsidiaries and coordination structures, also remain underexplored. The article formulates a research agenda for future studies.

Social Policy, Elections and The Weapons of The Poor: Informal Workers Influence In Latin America

To what extent do informal workers’ organisations, collectively, affect the geographic distribution of income support benefits targeted to the lower-income sectors? Why are some organisations more successful than others at obtaining benefits for their members? I argue that the informal workers’ collective action affects how social policy benefits are distributed both at the local level and, within districts, between organisations. Specifically, organisational density is a key factor explaining the distribution of resources that benefit the informal sector, especially when organisations are aligned with the governing party deciding the allocation of such resources. Furthermore, informal sector organisations with a greater capacity to mobilize and larger organisational structures are more able to negotiate with governments, and thus are more likely to capture a larger proportion of benefits. To test my argument, I leverage a previously unexploited census of beneficiaries of a core workfare program in Argentina that contains unique individual-level information of over 90,000 beneficiaries affiliated to 144 organisations.

Labour, the Left and the Political Economy of Labour Regulation in Latin America

This paper addresses whether ideological orientation and linkages to organised labour still play a role in driving partisan approaches to policy-making and implementation in labour regulation after the process of programmatic dealignment generated by successive waves of market-oriented reforms, and the pressures that arise from the integration of the region to the international economy. I implement a mixed-methods strategy that combines the statistical analysis of 19 Latin American countries with comparative case studies of the patterns of individual and collective labour reform. I show that partisanship is the most important determinant of changes in labour regulation, even controlling for the constraints deriving from the greater integration of Latin American economies into world markets. I also find that different parties have combined this greater propensity to protect workers in the labour market with varying degrees of strengthening of collective labour rights, reflecting varying coalitional imperatives in different political systems.

The Micro-dynamics of Labor Unions: Elites, Grassroots Activism and the Decentralization of Collective Bargaining, with Andrés Schipani

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of market reforms on the internal structure and strategies of trade union organizations, as well as their effects on the patterns of industrial relations in contemporary Argentina. In particular, we will analyze the collective action dilemmas faced by trade unions in the industrial sector in the face of the increase in the heterogeneity of the productive network and labor force that has taken place within the industrial branches. These dilemmas, we argue, have become more acute for union leaders since 2003, in a context of accelerated economic reactivation that has revitalized grassroots mobilization. Based on a comparative study of unions in the automotive and food industries, we show that even though this new productive configuration tends to conspire against the internal unity of unions, unions’ ability to overcome this problem was uneven. The article proposes an explanation centred on the degree of internal competition and the capacity of labour union elites to incorporate the demands of precarious workers. While the automotive workers’ union has faced little internal competition and has balanced demands of an heterogeneous workforce, leading to a greater capacity to mobilise the base and articulate collective bargaining at different levels, the food industry union was riddled with internal conflict and sidelined demands from precarious workers, which prevented the mobilisation of the base from above and led to the fragmented decentralisation of collective bargaining.

Work in Progress

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Lead to More Politically Engaged Citizenship? Experimental Evidence from Argentina, with Victoria Paniagua and Nelson A. Ruiz

Patterns of Informality and Policy Preferences in Latin America

Refugees With a New Home? The Fate of British EWC Representatives After Brexit, with Marco Hauptmeier and Louis Lines