Administrative Burdens as a Mechanism of Distributive Politics: How Organizational Brokers and Politicians Exploit Access Burdens to Social Housing in Mexico City

Abstract

This article presents a case study of Mexico City's social housing policy to expand our understanding of administrative burdens as a mechanism of political control over access to services and benefits. Faced with excessive and unclear waiting times for obtaining social housing via the city's social housing institute, citizens affiliate with social organizations that promise a reduction of those burdens in exchange for participation in collective protests and political proselytism to both sway and pressure local authorities and politicians to grant funding for housing projects and speed up construction permits. Vulnerable citizens in need of housing are captured in a political economy of administrative burdens conditioned by resource shortages in the formal bureaucracy and political leverage over the reduction of burdens. Understanding how political patronage may become engrained in policy implementation is relevant for the Global South but also for other contexts where concerns are growing over the weaponization of the state for political gain.