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Political trust and informal traders in African cities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2023
Abstract
How do cities foster political trust among informal workers? This question is particularly salient in Africa's growing cities where local governments must reconcile policy priorities across highly heterogeneous constituencies, including a burgeoning middle-class and a large informal economy. We argue that expectations about reciprocity and procedural justice shape the probability that informal traders trust their local government. In doing so, we analyse a survey of approximately 1000 informal traders in Ghana's three main cities – Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. We find that traders who paid requisite fees to local assemblies and could attribute a benefit from those payments were more likely to trust their local government while those who had experienced harassment by city authorities were less likely to do so. The paper highlights that drivers of trust among diverse urban constituencies deserve greater empirical and comparative attention, especially as countries deepen decentralisation initiatives and cities commit to development goals around inclusivity.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
The authors thank John Agandin and Mekamu Kedir for excellent research support and thank the reviewers and editor at JMAS for their feedback. For the implementation of the surveys with informal traders, they are very grateful to the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana, especially the leadership of Mavis Dupork Zome, Daniel Attoh Armah and Kakra Adu. They greatly appreciate funding for this research that was provided by USAID through its support to the Ghana Strategy Support Program of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and by the Policies, Institutions, and Markets program of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research. The research received ethics approval through IFPRI's Institutional Review Board while the authors were employees there under approval number 00007490. Any errors remain those of the authors.
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Director of Metro Planning, Tamale, 8.3.2018.Google Scholar
Director of Physical Planning, Accra, 14.3.2018.Google Scholar
Head of the Metro Guards, Kumasi, 3.13.2018.Google Scholar
Public Relations Officer, Accra, 7.3.2018.Google Scholar
Director of Metro Planning, Tamale, 8.3.2018.Google Scholar
Director of Physical Planning, Accra, 14.3.2018.Google Scholar
Head of the Metro Guards, Kumasi, 3.13.2018.Google Scholar
Public Relations Officer, Accra, 7.3.2018.Google Scholar