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Political trust and informal traders in African cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2023

Danielle Resnick Open the ORCID record for Danielle Resnick [Opens in a new window]  and
Bhavna Sivasubramanian Open the ORCID record for Bhavna Sivasubramanian [Opens in a new window]
Danielle Resnick*
Affiliation:
Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC 20036, and International Food Policy Research Institute, 1201 I Street NW, Washington, DC 20005, USA
Bhavna Sivasubramanian*
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher, Boston, MA, USA
*
Email: dresnick@brookings.edu
Email: bhavnasiva20@gmail.com
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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.

Keywords

CitiesGhanainformal economylocal governmentpolitical trust
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , September 2023 , pp. 389 - 412
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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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