5 WALTON Urban Conflicts IJURR

Urban Conflict and Social Movements in
Poor Countries: Theory and Evidence of

Collective Action*
JOHN WALTON
Urbanity is violence. The town spreads with one violence after another. Its equilibrium is
violence. 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 the
factories, without the industries with which to absorb the new influx, is empty. It attracts
without proposing anything besides resistance . . . So why be astonished at its scars, its
warpaint? (from the novel Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau, 1992).
Introduction
When experts reflect on political conflict in third world cities, they typically conclude
that it is either endemic or occasional, radical or conservative, tempestuous or quiescent.
Depending upon their assessment of the basic facts, specialists reason further that the
evidence 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 petty
commerce are understood as either autonomous political actors or manipulated clients of
elite patronage. The division of opinion is not only diametrical but perennial. Each decade
of development studies rehearses the debate between activism and clientism. Theoretical
positions first articulated in the 1960s are replicated today, albeit in different terms.
Despite a wealth of comparative research on the politics of urbanization, no general
explanation has won acceptance. Indeed, few have been attempted.
The hypothesis that rapid urbanization in the less developed countries generates
political mobilization was first advanced by theorists of social disorganization who argued
that uprooted masses of rural migrants would overwhelm the carrying capacity of cities,
leading to unemployment, disappointed expectations, alienation, misery and vulnerability
to extremist movements (Kornhauser, 1959; Abrams, 1965). As political events of the
1960s unfolded, this jaundiced view was transformed in studies that challenged
* This paper was presented at the Cities in Transition Conference, Research Committee on Sociology of
Urban and Regional Development, International Sociological Association, Humbolt University, Berlin, July
1997. 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 Ryken
Grattet, Jon Shefner, John Hartman, Charles Ragin, Ken Bollen and Robert Jackman. I have benefited from
reviews and comments by Susan Eckstein, Bryan Roberts, Sidney Tarrow, Michael Harloe and Chris
Pickvance.
ß Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Urban conflict and social movements in poor countries 461
characterizations of the urban poor as ‘marginal masses’ and argued for their active
participation in community organizations and social movements (Ross, 1975; Perlman,
1976; Castells, 1977; 1983). Although some of these community self-help movements
dwindled as their material goals were won, new forms of mobilization seemed to take their
place. By the 1980s, another urban insurgency was noted in the ‘new social movements’ of
women, Christian base communities, Muslim brotherhoods, environmentalists, human
rights activists and indigenous groups (Slater, 1985; Jelin, 1987; Eckstein, 1989; Escobar
and Alvarez, 1992; Wignaraja, 1993). After a controversial beginning under the aegis of
marginality theory, analyses of political mobilization by diverse urban movements and
constituencies 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 Latin
America compares participation of the poor in political parties, special-interest groups
and ethnic associations with a fourth type, clientism, and concludes that ‘patron-client
links are the most universal’. According to this theory, the poor are fundamentally
satisfied 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 response
to recent incidents of social unrest in Latin America, Gilbert (1994: 128) observes that on
balance ‘there is relatively little protest given the appalling conditions in which so many
people live’. Accordingly, the important question is, why this pattern of ‘relative
passivity’?
Although clientism is usually inferred from cross-sectional studies, some
interpretations deal with changing historical conditions. Hobsbawm’s (1967) study of
Latin American urban politics argues that a passive working class emerged under specific
circumstances. As urbanization accelerated in the 1930s, cities and their skilled working
classes that once had included a high proportion of European craftsmen were diluted and
depoliticized. Internal rural-urban migrants accustomed to the caudillismo of landed
patrons were politically immature, and they found life in the cities generally satisfying
given their own recent past. Political participation took the form of deference and
patronage 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 their
impoverished and economically marginal inhabitants multiplied, and inflation as often as
not was uncontrolled’ (Hobsbawm, 1967: 60). Portes (1972) supports these observations
with specific reference to Latin American slum dwellers, arguing that political
conservatism is the rational posture for these upwardly mobile groups who aspire to a
middle-class lifestyle. Similar conclusions about political passivity derive from critical
analyses of state and party systems that co-opt the urban poor with small concessions in
the form of services and subsidies while elites grab the lion’s share of privilege and
income (Eckstein, 1977; Vélez-Ibañez, 1983). In these interpretations the urban poor are
defended as rational actors making the best of austere circumstances rather than gullible
subjects of elite manipulation. Although the theory of clientism has enjoyed its greatest
success as a critique of jeremiads about social disintegration (e.g. Nelson, 1979), it
continues 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 hopeful
activism, a few have analyzed social conditions that might explain varied instances of
both. Hobsbawm’s (1967: 65) historical argument, for example, notes that the explosive
political potential of the city was held in check as long as industrialization and expanding
employment kept pace with urban migration. But ‘the comparative lull in the mass
politics of Latin America . . . will prove temporary’. Writing in 1967 and looking ahead to
a time when labor absorption would begin to fail, Hobsbawm presciently saw a period of
renewed conflict on the horizon. Leeds and Leeds (1976) based their analysis of variation
in mass political participation on characteristics of the state and party system, arguing that
ß Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998

462 John Walton
squatter communities themselves manipulated the system as much as they were

manipulated by it. Clientist participation might generate real material gains (not simply
concessions) in a multiparty system, yet expose the poor to unnecessary risks under
authoritarian regimes. Dynamics of state and party must be added to socio-economic
conditions in an interactive theory of political action. Recently, Stokes (1995) has
examined Peruvian urban politics over time, concluding that clientism has given way to
activism as a result of state initiatives for the provision of urban services that are seized
by local organizations, diffusion of labor movement strategies, and ‘counter-hegemonic’
ideologies of the Church and educational institutions. In the anguished period of debt
crisis and structural adjustment since the early 1980s, activist interpretations of third
world urban politics have gained ground.
It is difficult to argue with any of these positions. Doubtless there are times and
places in which activism or clientism reigns, just as there are social conditions that
promote 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 privilege
description over explanation. Too often the research question becomes whether activism
or clientism is the essential state of the masses rather than whether certain conditions are
conducive to more or less participation, different forms of conflict and cooperation,
changing arrangements of power, and so forth. Too often polemics with no unambiguous
empirical solution substitute for explanatory propositions capable of evaluation. Too
often the debate over activism vs. clientism leads to an impassé. The purpose of this paper
is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding urban politics in poor countries
and to illustrate (rather than to test rigorously) how propositions derived from that theory
compare with a variety of available evidence. The paper endeavors to develop hypotheses
capable of more exacting tests and to stimulate new approaches to data collection capable
of recording varied forms of urban conflict which so far have only been measured
indirectly. Conflict may come in different forms and the forms themselves, as well as the
extent to which each generates insurgency or patronage, may vary with time and
circumstance. At bottom this is an effort to think differently about these questions and the
variety 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, forms
and outcomes of urban political conflict in poor and developing countries. That aim is
ambitious but it grows out of an extensive research literature that seems overdue for
codification of its regional and case study variation. The theory is intentionally general
and a provocation to the venerable empirical tradition that has remained overly
descriptive and localized. The argument proceeds in several steps. First are matters of
distinction, types of collective action and their institutional contexts. Next the discussion
turns to the substance of urban life in poor countries as it is shaped by the intersection of
economy, state and civil society. Finally, a number of propositions are derived from this
discussion 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 theoretical
object here is collective action in third world cities — mobilized efforts of large numbers
of the urban population to represent their interests, redress grievances, or change policies
through claims on the larger society (cf. Tilly, 1978). Collective action may take many
forms ranging from non-compliant acts of everyday resistance (Scott, 1985) to sustained
movements for reform and revolution (Gugler, 1982; Walton, 1984). For present
purposes, three types of collective action cover a broad spectrum of popular mobilization
in third world cities while they also make key distinctions often masked in the debate over
activism versus clientism. Labor action includes mobilization arising in the sphere of

income and employment representing the interests of workers in such concrete repertoires
as strikes, job actions, and demonstrations protesting unemployment or policies
specifically harmful to labor. Collective consumption action includes mobilization by
consumers of urban services, action focused on the availability of collective or public
goods (e.g. land, housing, transportation, education, health and urban services — water,
streets, sewers, electrification) and expressed in actions such as land invasions, squatter
protests and street demonstrations. Political and human rights action involves popular
mobilization around non-material issues of justice, representation, security, freedom from
repression 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 often
compounded. Mass demonstrations protest austerity policies that simultaneously threaten
to cause unemployment and restrict collective consumption of subsidized food and
transportation. In Mexico, severe economic collapse has resulted in hunger strikes by
street sweepers invoking their human rights to lost jobs (New York Times, 21 January
1997). All this requires that overt acts be analyzed in their complexity, that distinctions be
drawn, polysemic intentions noted, and in the end that certain serviceable categories be
employed. But this is a general problem of observation and classification that should not
prevent careful generalization.
A similar threefold distinction refers to theorized influences on collective action. A
complete understanding of urban political conflict must reckon with the interacting forces
of economic structure, state policy and civil society. Each type of collective action is
affected in specifiable ways by distinct configurations of all these institutional forces.
Conversely, no causal privilege is proposed between, for example, labor action and the
economy to the neglect of state and civil society as decisive, interactive influences — and
so forth with respect to each action type. Economic structure refers to characteristic and
relatively permanent features of the urban economy, such as the sectoral composition of
the labor force, pattern of industrialization, occupational mobility, formal and informal
organization, employment potential and growth pattern. The state, paraphrasing Max
Weber, is the institutional reflection of a community that claims a monopoly of the
legitimate use of force, a compulsory association that enjoys legitimate authority derived
from law and tradition. Government represents, but does not exhaust, the presence of the
state in society. The state affects collective action by providing both certain key motives
for mobilization as well as the channels or means through which collective action is
expressed. The state creates both critical problems and opportunity structures. Civil
society is the realm of voluntary association outside the state that draws its authority from
culture rather than laws of government or the market. Civil society in the third world city
is represented by neighborhood associations, squatter organizations, religious societies,
groups of women and mothers, regional and ethnic associations. Theorizing about trends
and types of urban collective action begins with an analysis of developments in each of
these realms and their interrelationships.
The changing urban economy

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

464 John Walton
Cardoso and Faletto, 1979). The result is a pattern variously described as urban involution
(McGee, 1967), over urbanization (Bradshaw, 1987), or tertiarization (Evans and
Timberlake, 1980) — a pattern whereby the rapidly growing urban population of third
world cities is increasingly compressed into an overcrowded commercial-services sector.
A finite number of jobs in the tertiary sector is overwhelmed by urban migration and
relatively low levels of industrial employment, producing, in turn, extensive urban
underemployment, low wages and productivity, brutal competition, income inequality
and 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 import
substitution industrialization (ISI) phase of the 1960s, that do experience growth of the
industrial labor force. The exceptions are important and suggest particular implications
for political conflict.
Table 1 demonstrates contrasting patterns of labor force expansion under different
forms of industrialization using selected countries and years that bracket their experience
of economic growth. The United States represents the classical pattern in which large-
scale industrialization beginning in the late nineteenth century generates a substantial
labor force (up to one-third of the total) that holds its own with the shift to a service
economy. Selected Latin American countries whose modern industrialization is
concentrated in a later period show two tendencies. In Colombia and Peru, a pattern of
dependent industrialization appears in which employment in the secondary sector fails to
expand during years of economic growth and rapid urbanization. Brazil and Mexico, two
Latin American NICs whose development has been exceptional by continental standards,
demonstrate moderate employment expansion somewhere between classical and
dependent industrialization. Finally, using data from a comparable span of ‘historical
time’, 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 21 100

1900 38 30 32 100
1950 12 33 55 100
1980 3 30 67 100
Colombia 1925 65 17 18 100
1965 45 21 34 100
1980 34 24 42 100
Peru 1925 61 18 21 100
1965 50 19 31 100
1980 40 18 42 100
Brazil 1925 68 12 20 100
1965 48 20 31 100
1980 31 27 42 100
Mexico 1925 70 11 19 100
1965 50 22 29 101
1980 37 29 34 100
Taiwan 1956 48 18 33 99
1975 31 34 36 100
1988 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).

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 government
forest workers, fishers. workers, miners. workers.
Informal Migratory and casual Subcontract and Self-employed, street vendors,
labor. outworkers. domestics, drivers.
industrial employment. Comparative research supports the observation that dependent

industrialization is by far the most typical of the less developed countries, that ‘the urban
population of Third World nations is expanding too quickly given their level of economic
development’ (Bradshaw, 1987: 236). For example, between 1965 and 1980, the
industrial 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 its
division into complementary formal and informal sectors (Hart, 1973; Bromley and
Gerry, 1979; Mingione and Redclift, 1985; Portes et al., 1989). The formal sector is
regulated by the state; firms pay taxes and observe minimum-wage guarantees, while
workers are protected by social security systems and labor law. The informal sector by
contrast operates beyond the reach of state regulation, often in clandestine realms,
providing no protection for workers or tax contributions and product standards for
society. Formal and informal economies are not opposed but mutually reinforcing. The
state and formal sector firms contract the services of informal workers, while the informal
sector subsidizes the formal with low-wage, low-overhead, disposable industrial
outworkers (Birbeck, 1978) and middle-class consumers with low-cost goods and
services (Armstrong and McGee, 1985). Table 2 illustrates the contrast between formal
and informal jobs. Since the early 1980s, most of the third world (with some Asian
exceptions) has experienced a combination of debt crisis, arrested growth, and diminished
state regulation adding to pressures for expansion of both the tertiary and informal sector.
The result has been increased involution and compression, particularly at the intersection
of tertiary and informal (Roberts, 1994).
During the development decades of the 1960s and 1970s, economic growth in much
of the third world was rapid despite its tendency to generate dependency and growing
internal inequalities (Warren, 1973; Seers, 1981). Urban migrants fortunate enough to
obtain any sort of employment, the new ‘labor aristocracy’ in unionized formal-sector
jobs, the growing number of state workers and many a petty entrepreneur all enjoyed a
significant measure of social mobility. Of course, many were not so fortunate trading
rural for urban poverty or sacrificing themselves for the intergenerational mobility of their
children. And there were vast cross-national differences. For present purposes the
essential observation is that economic growth and social mobility came to a halt after
1980 in the wake of debt crisis. A watershed shift from dependent development to
neoliberal 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 developing
world. The expansion of the urban economies has been, until the 1980s, sufficient to bring a rise
in living standards for all the population. The rise has, to be sure, been greater for the upper and
middle classes, but even the poorest segments of the population have, until recently, seen some
improvement. . . This type of social mobility is, however, coming to an end in most parts of the
developing 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).

466 John Walton
During periods of development and upward social mobility, people improve their lot
in life through urban migration, broader (e.g. family) participation in the labor force, and
career advancement through the formal economy where income and benefits are greater.
Many families do achieve social mobility and prosperity through the informal sector but
the proportionate enjoyment of those gains is far greater in formal employment. Under
conditions of arrested or blocked social mobility, low-income urban groups resort to other
strategies. As Selby et al. (1990: 108, 120, emphasis added) discovered in a study of
Mexican family responses to the debt crisis, because ‘upward economic mobility, or
achieving a minimally decent level of living, is not to be attained through career
advancement . . . the household budget of the ordinary urban Mexican family is geared to
expenditure avoidance, rather than income maximization’.
On the basis of the economy alone, this section suggests a hypothesized general
principle of urban collective action in developing societies. During periods of economic
growth and social mobility, conflict tends to be low, aimed at income maximization, and
expressed in collective action focused chiefly on the institutional channels of labor unions
and political parties. Conversely, in periods of economic crisis and arrested mobility,
conflict is high, aimed at collective goods that reduce expenditures, and expressed in
collective action by popular mobilization. To the extent that third-world nations suffer
economic dependency and chronic underdevelopment, the latter pattern of conflict and
collective action is more common.
Rise and fall of the developmental state

Throughout the developing and former colonial world the postwar years witnessed the
creation of new states and the expansion of older ones for purposes of economic
development. 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 regulate
them in the interests of planned growth. State-owned enterprises were established to help
direct this process, provide economies of scale, assure the development of essential
industries, and deal on an equal footing with multinational firms. Planned investment
included large infrastructure projects — dams, roads, reclamation, electrification and
ports. Most important, the new ‘developmentalist state’ (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: 143;
McMichael, 1996: 39) was distinguished from earlier state forms by its interventionist
strategy through mechanisms to support the social wage and ensure the general welfare
with central planning, social security, health care, workers compensation, minimum wage
and trade union rights. The developmental state was capitalist and dependent on trade and
aid from western industrial nations, but it also attempted to husband national capital in a
set of policies that included import-substitution industrialization, capital and exchange
rate 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 states
displayed a clear urban bias (Lipton, 1977). Public investment in health, education,
architecture, infrastructure and enterprise went disporportionately to the big cities
alongside state and corporate headquarters. Urban bias was implemented through a
dense network of policy and legislation. For example, developmental states often
overvalued the exchange rate of national currency in a manner that favored imported
consumption (wage) goods (including food), and disadvantaged (mainly primary-
product) exports. Urban consumers were in effect subsidized giving the appearance of
generalized development and restraining upward pressures on wages and improvements
in the standard of living (de Janvry, 1981). A social pact was created between the state
and low-income groups based on patron-client exchange — regime support for a set of
urban collective goods and services ranging from land and housing to subsidized food
and public employment (Cornelius, 1975; Ross, 1975). The developmental state

certainly cultivated other forms of lucrative patronage for upper-income groups, but its
strategy rested on a new social pact with the growing numbers and political potential of
the urban poor. For that reason, developmental states reached their fullest expression in
the more democratic nations just as they created pressures for democratization
elsewhere.
During periods of economic growth and generous international lending, developing
countries successfully maintained the welfare state apparatus. For example, many Latin
American states adopted national health and social security programs. States weathered
oil price shocks and recession in the 1970s by borrowing heavily to support public
services and popular consumption. External debt soared, requiring new loans to pay old
ones. By the early 1980s, when the international financial system recognized the debt
crisis, urban groups had become accustomed to basic state guarantees. Over the course of
a generation a ‘moral economy of the poor’ (Thompson, 1966) had evolved on the
premise that hard work and political loyalty were rewarded by an urban homestead and
employment opportunity. The social pact prevailed in most instances, although
developmental states were not averse to repression when demands outpaced the ability
to satisfy many constituents at once. Social inequality and official arrogance were
tolerated by the poor majority owing to a combination of force and favor. But the system
was predicated on reciprocity among interacting participants — stable under the
conditions described, but also delicate.
The developmental state and its social pact with low- and moderate-income urban
groups collapsed with debt crises and austerity programs beginning in the early 1980s. On
one hand, states lost the financial capacity to support extensive social welfare and public
employment. On the other, internationally sponsored structural adjustment programs
(SAPs) required as a condition of loan renegotiation that states dismantle precisely the
apparatus that made them developmental states: state spending and employment was cut,
food and transportation subsidies eliminated, public enterprises privatized, exchange rates
devalued, protection removed and markets opened to foreign investment. The moral
economy, 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 hypothesis
that urban collective action is restrained, focused on divisible goods, and institutionally
channeled when developmental states enter into material and moral agreements to
generate and share the fruits of economic growth. Conflict escalates, focuses on collective
goods, and is expressed in popular action repertoires when the state neglects or withdraws
social welfare. A moral economy that is created and subsequently violated generates more
conflict than do weak states with desultory development policies. The developmental
state had expanded political opportunity through the social pact which gave rights to
labor, encouraged local associations, and widened the electoral franchise. Like the moral
economy, these means of collective action constitute a legacy for conflict during fiscal
crises.
The growth of civil society

Civil society, Gramsci’s ‘social trenches’ on the battlefield of popular struggle, is a
characteristic feature of urban society in poor countries. A large literature on migrant
adaptation to the city repeatedly emphasizes the role of voluntary local organizations in
assisting new arrivals with housing, employment and self-defense (Little, 1965; Gilbert
and 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 the
diversity and vitality of civil society. The classics are elaborated in a rich monographic
literature that describes, for example, the resourcefulness of migrant communities in

468 John Walton
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 profile
with the addition of religious groups such as Christian base communities (Levine and
Mainwaring, 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 its
peak just prior to land invasions and during the initial months or years of petitioning the
state for land titles (‘regularization’) and urban services. But success breeds complacency.
As squatter communities develop physically and resident incomes rise, organization
declines, 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 quiescence
may also have their limits and cycles. After having written one of the classical studies of
state domination in Mexico City neighborhoods, Susan Eckstein (1977) was afforded the
opportunity for a before-after experimental design in a re-study following the major
earthquake of 1985. Despite earlier appearances of co-optation and apathy, when the
inner-city community was threatened by government plans for demolition and
gentrification, people organized in vital and creative ways to save the neighborhood.
‘The successful mobilization for housing gives credence to the thesis that protest
movements among the economically and politically weak are especially likely to occur
when [communities] with social and cultural bonds experience sudden economic
deprivation, when they lack attractive alternatives to ‘exit’ and seek individual solutions
to 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 an
old neighborhood in Guadalajara, another re-study demonstrated similar revitalization of
community organizations and new alliances with professional support groups, albeit with
fewer 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 mobilizations
may recapture the halcyon days of squatter invasions and urban service demands. The last
few years have seen a flowering of work on social movements in poor countries
(Eckstein, 1989; Escobar and Alvarez, 1992; Wignaraja, 1993), much debate over
whether they are ‘new’ movements or simply evolving and reconstituted versions of older
types (Knight, 1990; Calhoun, 1993), but considerable agreement on the essential point
that from the 1980s onward a new wave of urban political mobilization has occurred.
Focusing on São Paulo, Paul Singer (1982) describes ‘new barrio movements’ for
squatters, human rights, and a cost-of-living campaign, all linked with Christian base
communities. Singer’s movements explicitly reject the ‘politica de clientel’ identifying
patron-client ties not simply as a slippery slope to co-optation but as intrinsically
defeating of equity and empowerment. The political consciousness of new social
movements is both keenly aware and highly critical of clientism. Local organizations
have repudiated their patrons, their own co-opted leaders, and split over the difference
(Vélez-Ibañez, 1983).
The hypothesized causes of these movements are not far from hand. Friedmann and
Salguero (1988: 3) write about a ‘new activism of civil society . . . a barrio movement for
collective self-empowerment’ rooted in household and neighborhood economies and
comprised of soup kitchens, housing cooperatives, locally controlled markets and similar
alternative arrangements.

In Latin America, this resurgence of civil society in the public domain has had specific
proximate causes: the utter inability of the modern production sectors to provide a sufficient
livelihood for any but a minor fraction of the working population and a state whose repeated
attempts at countervailing policies have proved ineffective even as it has, in country after
country, applied the stern principle of mano 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 provide
materially for the majority of citizens and state recourse to repression in the absence of
radical political solutions. Escobar and Alvarez (1992: 1) add specificity to this
explanation, 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 the
evolution and reassertion of civil society under these conditions. Urban groups turn to
institutions of civil society that now provide the only organized, collective alternative for
economic self-defense and redressing political action. Civil society has been evolving
with 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 actors
in recent ethnographies (Vélez-Ibañez, 1983; Lubeck, 1986; Gay, 1990; Stokes, 1995).
Reasoning from the standpoint of civil society alone, organizationally developed
solutions for coping with urban life are adopted by popular groups as the state
increasingly withdraws into privatization and deregulation. Energies of the older moral
economy are reinvested in civil society, including its conventional and newly evolved
organizational methods. Political opportunity structures initially created or encouraged by
the developmental state (neighborhood associations, elections, labor confederations,
human settlements’ ministries) are appropriated by their civil society constituents as the
state retreats. Collective action expressed through social movements and the rights of
citizens increases. Democratization becomes the ethic and instrument of groups
independent of the state.
Theoretical summary
This analysis rests on two premises woven together in a context of changing substantive
conditions. Explanation of collective action in third world cities begins with a heuristic
typology of labor, collective consumption and political rights as distinct, interrelated
forms. Collective action forms are shaped mainly by developments over time in the
economy, state and civil society. A set of hypotheses about the timing, form and intensity
of collective action connects the two premises. Both the types of collective action and the
institutional arenas interact in a complex of reciprocal and causal relations.
Labor, collective consumption, and political rights action are each affected by
configurations of state, economy and civil society influences. These patterned
configurations change with time and developmental phases (see Figure 1). Labor action,
for example, is closely associated with changes in the economy and especially growth
phases, but the state plays a role by defining the rights of capital and labor, and civil
society contributes as in the case of cultural groups that enable the mobilization and
resistance of Bolivian tin miners (Nash, 1989) or Islamic societies that support strikes and
unionization in Nigeria (Lubeck, 1986). Collective consumption action is institutionally
focused, in the main, orchestrated by the state and state provision of public goods, but it is
intensified by economic decline and inequality, and civil society provides its means of
expression as in the case of women’s groups that organize austerity protests (Daines and
Seddon, 1994). Political and human rights action is born in civil society but depends
fundamentally on changes in state formation, enfranchisement and repression, and on
economic policy, such as recent neoliberal reforms that facilitate democratization
movements (Walton and Seddon, 1994). Forms of collective action may follow

470 John Walton
Periods
!
Major Influences Early Urbanization Developmental State Neoliberalism
(ca. 1930–60) (ca. 1960–80) (ca. 1980 )
!
Conflict generally Conflict moderate to Conflict moderate to
Economy low. Collective high. Collective high. Collective
action mainly action focused on action focused on
!
focused on labor collective political rights and
State issues and individual consumption and collective
vs. collective goods. labor. Institutionally consumption.
!
Political relations channeled political Growing popular
Civil Society based on craft and relations. movements
rural traditions. independent of state.
Figure 1 Summary of collective action patterns by major influences and periods of development
independent trajectories such as cycles of labor protest (Shorter and Tilly, 1974), just as
periods of unusual stress may confound various action types — an argument pursued
below in the recent experience of poor countries.
Propositions and evidence

The foregoing theoretical framework allows derivation of a number of propositions, some
of which are developed here in light of pertinent evidence. The principal limitation on
rigorous theory testing, of course, is a relative dearth of empirical evidence that measures
urban conflict in developing countries in a valid, reliable, systematic, comparative and
longitudinal 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 reached
gross judgements about that process under the doubtful assumption that the phenomenon
was homogeneous and monotonic. The problem is not relieved by inventive measures of
urban conflict. Forms of labor conflict such as strikes have been measured comparatively
but in widely varying ways. Published data on strikes and lockouts by the International
Labor Office (1994), for example, depend on the self-reporting of countries with different
labor laws and policies, while academic studies of the timing and frequency of labor
unrest employ newspaper reports of labor agitation (Silver, 1995). Although it is difficult
to imagine how else labor conflict might be measured comparatively, the methods are
flawed and these two procedures alone generate somewhat inconsistent results. Forms of
conflict over collective consumption such as illegal property invasions and squatter
settlements have been universally documented but never measured comparatively.
Generally, we are not now in a position to make definitive tests of hypotheses about urban
conflict. Yet progress requires that we formulate tractable propositions, and with them in
mind begin to explore a variety of suggestive data sources. The results will remain
tentative but they may provide good analytical leads and ideas for better measures. The
following eight propositions are a start.
1. In broad outline, urban problems in developing societies have been more typically
mediated by patron-client relations rather than by popular activism.
As we have seen, the argument for this proposition is two-fold. First, clientism offers a
less costly alternative for redress of grievances that suits the purposes of both the state and
the urban poor. Second, it has worked effectively in times of state expansion and urban

social mobility. The first and most obvious place to look for evidence of this proposition
is in characterizations of urban political action by close observers. How do authors of the
standard reference works answer this question? Joan Nelson’s (1979: 383) comprehensive
book, subtitled ‘Politics and the urban poor in developing nations’, identifies four
‘patterns of participation’, ethnic associations, political parties, special interest groups
and patron-client links, the latter being ‘the most universal’. In a more recent review of
this research, Gilbert and Gugler (1992: 180) conclude that the ‘recurrent theme’ is the
politics of co-optation. Roberts (1995: 194) notes that ‘there were several factors making
political and civil rights [conflict] less salient in Latin America during the period of
import-substitution industrialization from the 1940s to the 1970s. Chief amongst them, I
suggest, was the social mobility that accompanied urbanization and economic
development’. Additional, direct evidence for this hypothesis follows in connection with
subsequent propositions.
2. Collective action, when it does take place, is more likely to occur in the form of
collective 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 the
intentions of migrant and rapidly urbanizing populations. In the cities of developing
societies, large segments of the population experience chronic poverty with limited
(geographical and intergenerational rather than individual) mobility opportunities. To the
extent that these groups are absorbed into the urban economy, it is principally through the
underemployed informal tertiary sector where protest organizations (e.g. trade unions)
and repertoires (e.g. strikes) are in the main not present. Neighborhoods and communities
are the more common locus of mobilized action and urban services are the currency of
political exchange — public goods such as water, electricity and transportation that
improve the material condition of households by reducing their expenditures.
Turning once more to reviews of the evidence as evidence, expert opinion is
remarkably consistent. In Africa, Piel and Sada (1984: 265, 342) observe that industrial
workers are conservative, collective action is covert and ‘though radical outbursts occur
they tend to be rare’. Political participation finds other expressions, ‘individuals and
groups are probably most active at the defensive and allocative levels, in appealing for or
against government action or proposed action (e.g. a request for a new market or against
the destruction of a squatter settlement)’. In Latin America:
the cross section of the urban population offered by squatter and other settlements can be
compared to advantage with that provided, for example, by trade unions. In the transitional
economies of Latin America, established industrial, construction, and transportation workers —
especially those belonging to unions — represent a much restricted sector. . . Lower-class
settlements not only represent the most varied and highly focalized cross-section of the urban
poor but also, and perhaps most importantly, embody the most vital manifestations of their
political action. Organized land invasions, to cite only the best known case, represent viable
instances of political struggle . . . rather than occupational or income needs, it is the demand for
housing that has most effectively politicized the poor (Portes and Walton, 1976: 74).
Comparative studies concur. Drakakis-Smith (1987: 51–2) observes that political

movements of the urban poor are usually expressed in ‘non-institutional’ forms such as
rent strikes or squatting rather than through institutional channels provided by trade
unions and political parties. ‘The more institutional options are often the least effective
form of action. . . Trade unions can be very ineffective vehicles for political protest by the
poor, few of whom have the sort of employment which leads to union membership. . . As
a 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

472 John Walton
seizure of land by squatters’. Finally, Gilbert and Gugler (1992: 192, 200) note three
patterns of political conflict; among them ‘a broad, class-conscious movement of workers
is very much the exception’, while struggle for land is ‘the most conspicuous political
action of the urban masses’ and street demonstrations, riots and insurrections play an
important role.
A corollary to this proposition is that collective consumption action is motivated by
the efforts of individuals and households with few opportunities to improve their situation
by increasing their income and so a preference for minimizing expenses. Case study
evidence supports this interpretation. Urban movements in South African black townships
arose 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 an
increase 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 to
already tight budgets’ (New York Times, 7 February 1997). The evidence on austerity
protests 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, in
the several countries of Africa and Latin America with a tradition of industry and trade
unions.
5. In periods of economic decline and withdrawal of the developmental state, collective

action by labor recedes in favor of collective consumption struggles.
These three propositions are presented together owing to their obvious interrelation and
because they are effectively addressed by the same data sets. Familiar reasoning suggests
that periods of first-wave urbanization, economic growth, developmental state formation
and social mobility are conducive to institutional forms of collective action. Conversely,
later waves of urbanization, economic downturn, reduced levels of state support and
immobility produce a greater frequency of collective consumption action. Of course, land
invasions and demands for urban-services have occurred during periods of state and
economic expansion. The argument here is that conflict centered on collective
consumption has in recent years increased to rival and sometimes supplant clientism
and institutional forms of action.
Figure 2 combines in graphic form cross-national longitudinal data on labor disputes
and austerity protests. The data are partial and no doubt more suggestive than
confirmatory. In self-reported data about conflict, countries may underestimate and
national definitions of what constitutes a recognized strike or lockout vary. Yet these data
do provide a rare attempt at compiling comparative evidence on urban conflict and may
gain credibility when triangulated with other case-study and secondary material. In the
figure, trends in the frequency of strikes and lockouts compiled by the International Labor
Office (ILO) are presented for three representative countries chosen for purposes of
intercontinental comparison. Inspection of the ILO Yearbook of labor statistics (1994) for
various nations and years suggests that the patterns in Figure 2 are typical. Not all strikes
are urban, requiring certain provisos in the interpretation of these data. The ILO has
recently begun to disaggregate strikes by economic activity, allowing a focus on more
typically urban manufacturing and services, but the distinctions are not provided for the
full time series. In any case, the pattern in recent figures is similar for the manufacturing
and the total of all forms, suggesting that long-term totals for all strike activity can be
used as a proxy for temporal changes in urban labor action.

Figure 2 Labor disputes for selected countries and austerity protest (sources: International
Labor Office Yearbooks; Walton and Seddon, 1994)
In support of proposition three, the data show a relatively low level of labor action
during the early years of growth and urbanization in the 1960s, followed by a significant
rise in the mid-1970s when labor has established its political power within the growing
state and economy. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, labor protest does not diminish
with the economic crisis of the 1980s but reasserts itself during the initial period of
austerity and then declines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The proposition requires
reformulation, emphasizing that the cycles of different forms of urban conflict are not
necessarily asynchronic but may coincide, as we shall see momentarily.
Figure 3 provides similar comparisons with the added contrast between representative
developing countries (Peru and Nigeria) and two NICs (India and Brazil). The data
support proposition four. Although the Brazil data do not cover the early period, in
general terms the pattern shows lower levels in the 1960s, two peaks in the 1970s and
1980s, and sharp decline in the 1990s. As expected, the NICs show much higher levels of
strike activity. Further support for proposition four is demonstrated in data (also reported
by the ILO) that employ the number of workers involved or worker days lost rather than
the absolute number of strikes. In NICs such as South Korea, large industrial
conglomerates with vast numbers of employees may have relatively few strikes but
those that do occur are huge. Korean society was brought to a standstill in late 1996 and
early 1997 when the government attempted to legislate a new labor law that would have
compromised union power and permitted wide layoffs. As many as 350,000 workers
staged a general strike lasting several weeks and provoking a governmental crisis which
the trade unions eventually won (New York Times, 28 December 1996). Such labor
militance is unthinkable in most of the developing world.
Turning to proposition five, the task of identifying or creating comparative
longitudinal data on collective consumption action is formidable. Standard national
accounts do not address the question and social scientists have yet to devise useful
indices. We must look for proxy measures and case-study alternatives. A reasonable
indicator of collective consumption action is the frequency and intensity of ‘austerity
protests’ in the form of demonstrations, strikes and riots over the past twenty years that

474 John Walton
Figure 3 Labor disputes in selected developing countries and NICs (source: International Labor
Office Yearbooks)
are specifically aimed at changes in public policy that eliminate food and transportation
subsidies, threaten mass unemployment, increase the cost of living, and otherwise
threaten the urban poor as a class of victims. The only available sources of comparative
quantitative data on austerity protest are contemporary newspaper accounts, although the
validity of these descriptions can be verified through more extensive case studies of
specific instances (Walton and Ragin, 1990; Walton and Seddon, 1994). The measure is
not 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 labor
protest. Yet the measure is conceptually resonant with collective consumption because it
enumerates protests over the elimination of public goods on behalf of the urban poor as a
whole. Other evidence on the incidence of urban social movements complements the
pattern of austerity protest, adding the plausibility of multiple indicators.
The data in Figure 4 show the trajectory of anti-austerity demonstrations, strikes, and
IMF riots since their inception in response to SAPs in the mid-1970s. There is a clear
relationship with cost-of-living changes and, when austerity protest data are
superimposed on Figure 2 (the boldface line at the lower right of the graph), a new
finding appears. In support of proposition five, collective consumption action as
measured by austerity protest increases during the years of economic crisis and state
withdrawal. But contrary to expectations, labor protest does not recede, at least not
initially in the crisis years of the 1980s — labor and collective consumption action
increase 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 understood
as victims of one long crisis continuing to the present. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s (in
Figures 2 and 3) labor conflict does decline as austerity protest resurges and then levels
off to maintain an appreciable presence in the mid-1990s. Stated differently, debt crises
and austerity protest reached their highest sustained levels from 1982–92 and in some
countries have persisted ever since, sometimes (e.g. in the 1980s) in association with
labor conflict.
Further evidence of a rise in collective consumption action during economic and state
decline comes from case studies of urban social movements. Urban movements have been
observed in a wide variety of countries (Castells, 1983; Mayer, 1987; Wignaraja, 1993;

Figure 4 Austerity protests by year and consumer price increases, 1976–96 (n = 166) (sources:
International Labor Office Yearbooks; Walton and Seddon, 1994)
Foweraker, 1995) but in the case of Mexico, a number of observers have scrutinized the
development of a nationally coordinated Urban Popular Movement (MUP) — a loose
assembly of grassroots groups organized around housing, urban services, social welfare
and cost-of-living issues. Although none of the observers has attempted a quantitative
analysis 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 and
Ortoll, 1996), but no sustained social movement on a national scale until the rise and
suppression of the student movement in 1968. In the aftermath, an urban popular
movement appeared in the early 1970s, suffered setbacks but expanded from 1979–83,
and then flourished in the late 1980s under the combined encouragement of earthquake
reparations, state cutbacks and a serious new challenge to one-party rule in 1988. The
early 1990s saw some waning of social movement initiatives, although local groups
persevere and continue looking for new national openings (Moctezuma, 1984; Carr and
Montoya, 1986; Ramirez Sáiz, 1989; Coulomb, 1991; Bennett, 1992; Shefner, 1997). The
key point about timing is that this periodization coincides neatly with the pattern of
austerity protests (viz. growth in the 1970s, peaks in the early and late 1980s, and
continuation to the present). The complementarity of austerity protest and social
movement 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 of
austerity protest (Walton and Ragin, 1990). Overurbanization, measured by the ‘excess’

476 John Walton
to which a country is urbanized by contrast to its economic development (in light of the
average levels for all developing countries) gets at the problem of an urban population too
large for its own capacity to provide employment. Overurbanization is highly correlated
with the incidence and severity of austerity protest and figures importantly (along with
IMF pressures for debt repayment) in regression models that predict protest.
7. Political and human rights action is associated with periods of state formation and
radical restructuring such as the recent international initiative for neoliberal economic
and political reform.
Evidence for this proposition is elusive, particularly when collective action is referred to
the 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 one
hand, collective action on behalf of political rights is a distinct type that helps clarify
matters 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 in
the developing countries has become central in recent years. One indirect measure of this
new 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 the
early 1980s has helped promote a new and global movement of democratization. The
explanation for this somewhat unexpected development lies in the interplay of national
and international constraints. From the international side: structural adjustment programs
have weakened former mechanisms of state co-optation and coercion, neoliberal ideology
supports a limited bourgeois state, post-cold war geopolitics no longer require stable
authoritarian states, and global competition for capital compels states to pursue
democratic harmony and investor stability. From the national standpoint: less developed
countries constrained by fiscal austerity can no longer afford clientism, greater popular
sovereignty is a condition that citizens expect in exchange for austerity, civil society
thrives under these conditions, and new social movements for democracy rise to the
structural opportunity (Walton and Seddon, 1994).
Turning to the evidence, democratization is of course a movement of long historical
pedigree. In a new periodization of ‘waves of democracy’, Markoff (1996) notes
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revolutionary state formations and then focuses on the
much 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 the
decolonizing world (e.g. India), and finally what Markoff (1996: 80) calls the ‘newest and
greatest 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 regional
level. Lubeck (1992: 536) describes a:
revival of popular democratic participation expressed in food riots, strikes by workers, and
demands by professional and middle class for elections [which one author calls] ‘Africa’s
second independence’. . . Indeed, an astonishing number of popular movements have arisen to
demand 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 new
generational force demanding democracy, human rights, and the resolution of economic and
social crisis.
The wave of democratization movements continues. By the mid-1990s, Lubeck’s

African list could be extended to include Niger, Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana and South
Africa. Important movements appeared also in Asia (Philippines, Nepal, South Korea,

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 in
support of democratic elections and against constitutional manipulations of the franchise
in Peru, Kenya and the Philippines. And it must be added that the locus of all these
movements is almost invariably in urban areas and structures of civil society. Although
the new democratization movement calls for more systematic and comparative-historical
analysis, 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, no
suggestion of linear or evolutionary change is supported. Each type of action was found to
wax and wane in cycles with distinct constellations of economic, political and cultural
causes (Tarrow, 1993). At times, a given form of collective action may thrive in the
absence of others, capturing, in effect, the mobilized energies of the moment. But cycles
converge, in this instance particularly the cycles of labor, collective consumption and
democratization action brought about by the unusually severe depredations of debt crisis
and structural adjustment during the 1980s. While demonstrating a pattern, the data also
caution against simple causal interpretations.
Conclusion
The theoretical argument developed here addresses the rich monographic literature on
urbanization, community and politics in developing countries. It attempts to codify that
research and, particularly, to move beyond perennial debates between clientism and
radicalism. A basic distinction between types of collective action clarifies matters at the
outset by suggesting circumstances under which, say, labor action may flourish while
collective consumption or political action is restrained. Further clarification and
differentiation are provided with recognition of a cycle in the urbanization process that
may involve mobility and satisfaction at one stage followed by involution and
degradation at another. Formulation of these arguments as propositions helps specify
controversial questions and bring them into contact with available evidence. Although
that evidence is not always perfectly apposite, it does exist to a greater extent than is
normally exploited, it answers some questions quite well, and where complementary
measures can be found it provides stronger tests. Above all, the propositions and data sets
demonstrate, first, engaging differences in patterns of urban conflict that invite robust
interpretation, and, second, contemporary events that are unfolding rapidly with great
theoretical 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 few
words. We have argued that the urban poor are social actors who conduct their lives in an
economic, political and cultural milieu. They reasonably take satisfaction from moves
that improve their standard of living and, if not constitutionally conservative, prefer
clientele 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 states
or rebellious communities. The essential point is that collective action derives from the
interaction of state, economy and civil society — aggrieved groups mobilize culturally
and engage the state in strategic ways. Occasionally they even succeed.
John Walton (jtwalton@ucdavis.edu), Department of Sociology, University of

California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

478 John Walton
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Urban Conflict and Social Movements in

Poor Countries: Theory and Evidence of

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squatter communities themselves manipulated the system as much as they were

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

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The changing urban economy

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Country Year Primarya Secondaryb Tertiaryc Total %

United States 1860 59 20 21 100

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Primary Secondary Tertiary

industrial employment. Comparative research supports the observation that dependent

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Rise and fall of the developmental state

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The growth of civil society

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Cairo (Abu-Lughod, 1964), neighborhood associations in Guatemala City (Roberts,

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Propositions and evidence

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Comparative studies concur. Drakakis-Smith (1987: 51–2) observes that political

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5. In periods of economic decline and withdrawal of the developmental state, collective

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6. Collective consumption action is associated with the pattern of urban involution

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The wave of democratization movements continues. By the mid-1990s, Lubeck’s

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John Walton (jtwalton@ucdavis.edu), Department of Sociology, University of

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