Alisha Holland's book proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding the politics of enforcement in Latin America. Against the conventional argument that characterises non-enforcement as a sign of state weakness, she argues that local politicians use forbearance, defined as the intentional and revocable choice not to enforce the law, as a political strategy and welfare policy. Using a comparative and mixed-methods research design, she documents the extent to which politicians and bureaucrats choose forbearance rather than sanctions against squatting and street vending, practices that she defines as violations of the law committed by the poor. To build her case, Holland compares enforcement decisions towards squatting and street vending in three Latin American cities: Santiago, Chile; Bogotá, Colombia; and Lima, Peru; and uses Istanbul in Turkey as a control case study.
The eight-chapter book devotes the first two chapters to describe forbearance as a theoretical framework and to provide empirical support for the political influence of forbearance in voting preferences across Latin America. In Chapter 1, Holland defends the thesis that the concept of forbearance, and specifically pro-poor non-clientelistic forbearance, fills a void arguably left by alternative explanations regarding the politics of enforcement. An electoral explanation for forbearance depicts how enforcement decisions can have vote-seeking instead of rent-seeking motivations, be aimed at gaining public opinion support instead of being the product of interest-group alliances, demonstrate politicians’ social commitment beyond welfare capabilities, and could have fewer clientelistic orientations if validated by social rights protections. Given that it is a rather difficult task to quantify politicians’ intent, Holland borrows the concept of elasticity from economics to identify forbearance as a function of institutional capacity versus electoral incentives. Forbearance appears when enforcement is inelastic to resources and varies along electoral incentives delineated by the structure of social policy implementation and decentralisation. In Chapter 2, she presents evidence for the electoral effect by analysing an experimental vignette survey of hypothetical candidates in Bogotá and supplemental analysis from the Latin American Public Opinion Project. In this latter survey, the choice of questions refers to squatting as an act of protest, and provides weak support for her claim. Yet, for Latin Americanist scholars, the argument that the poor would support forbearance for squatting and street vending may not be surprising.
The subsequent chapters offer a comparative test of the theoretical claims for squatting and street vending, focusing on local governments within and across Latin American cities. Chapter 3 focuses on the role of national housing policies and squatting in Lima, Bogotá and Santiago de Chile. The comparative analysis demonstrates that substitute housing policies reduce forbearance and that enforcement increases among city mayors. Chapter 4 examines how the electoral weight of poor voters sways city mayors in the direction of forbearance towards street vending regardless of the associational strength of vending associations or the political influence of business groups. In both of these chapters, Holland relies on a rich description of the policy context, policy tracking of squatting and informal subdivisions, and public opinion analysis on street vending from newspaper coverage.
The detailed account of enforcement decisions in respect of squatting or vending offers the reader some grounds for interrogating forbearance as non-enforcement, given that the ‘law’ consists of competing mandates and regulation at different government levels. In that regard, Holland's analysis seems to depart from a narrow operationalisation of enforcement as acts of coercion, when some higher-level mandates aim at protecting the right to work or housing – even if imperfectly – and local governments are not equipped to implement social policies that advance the enforcement of social rights. Moreover, the description of street vending and squatting as law violations disregards the fact that there are far more layers of regulations covering each of these practices. A careful consideration of those regulatory nuances might have rendered available a far lower number of cases for empirical analysis than the author presupposes.
In Chapter 5, Holland delves into the role of electoral geographies produced by decentralisation in shaping responses towards squatting/informal subdivisions and street vending. A forbearing politician can win votes from the poor, but lose votes from the middle class. Therefore, how decentralisation delineates the leverage of poor voters is critical to explaining forbearance. Poverty decreases sanctions against squatting and street vending at the local level in decentralised contexts. In contrast, either mixed-class constituencies at the local level or centralised electoral constituencies reduce the effect of poverty on forbearance. Enforcement of hard crime, which affects all class constituencies, serves as a comparison to validate this finding. Enforcement of crime increases with the number of offences, regardless of poverty at the local level for all three cities. However, this contrast may also be because street vending or squatting are not conceptualised as strong civil offences and are endogenous practices in these types of neighbourhoods.
The last chapters reflect on the path dependencies generated by post-hoc or informal welfare policies in Latin America and present the case studies on Chile and Turkey, whose local governments have left behind the practice of forbearance. Holland argues that national politicians’ overreliance on informal welfare policies have altered subsequent policy choices. In the case of Lima, Holland argues that property titling policies and programmes to promote entrepreneurship, among others, have discouraged politicians from investing in substitutive policies. Bogotá constitutes an intermediate case, as its institutional strength, through an activist Constitutional Court, has increased investment in substitute policies. While the provision of affordable housing may be closer to addressing the needs of the poor, employment or entrepreneurship policies in each of these cases may be far from ‘crowding out’ street vending. Yet, Holland fails to account for the impact of targeted street trade policies such as relocations in Lima or exchange programs in Bogotá. Moreover, the case studies in which local governments ended the practice of forbearance do not necessarily paint a hopeful democratic transition. Enforcement against squatting in Chile builds on the experience of military repression that led, according to Holland, to the resetting of societal expectations about how to access basic social goods once democratic authorities were in charge. In the case of Turkey, the capacity to sanction squatters or street vendors is not only the product of economic growth but the playing out of ethnic cleavages and tensions to limit the electoral costs of coercive enforcement.
The concept of forbearance adds to a growing body of literature that puts the inner workings of the state and policy design at the core of informal politics. It invites a myriad of new empirical research questions to complement alternative explanations of enforcement politics. As Holland's analysis draws mainly from politicians at the top of the local bureaucratic hierarchy, it is possible that the vote-seeking motivations of forbearing politicians match the interests of rent-seeking bureaucrats responsible for everyday enforcement. Similarly, forbearance may not necessarily exclude political dynamics in which the poor push for more institutionalised solutions, or redefine enforcement around social rights instead of sanctions. Holland's book is a necessary read for those interested in social policy, urban governance and political dynamics in contemporary Latin America.
