The Kellogg Institute for International Studies presents “Forbearance as Redistribution: The Informal Welfare State in Urban Latin America,” a lecture by Alisha Holland.
Why do governments tolerate the violation of their own laws and regulations? Focusing on property law violations by the urban poor, Holland shows that politicians choose not to enforce the law (“forbearance”) to distribute resources and signal their class commitments to the poor. Forbearance, in turn, reshapes what the poor expect of their politicians and how welfare states have developed in Latin America.
Holland, a 2014–17 junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, will return in 2016 to her alma mater, Princeton University, as assistant professor of politics. Her research focuses on the comparative political economy of development and especially on urban politics and Latin America.