Holland By Hugh Holland Summary

After reading Holland’s book, one is left feeling somewhat unsatisfied, not because of a lack in the quality of the work, but simply because many questions still linger about this complex political dynamic. For example, how exactly are politicians able to overcome principal-agent problems and ensure that enforcement agents comply? Holland also intentionally focuses on enforcement decisions “from above,” (59) paying less attention to the motivations of the poor themselves. But it is unclear how groups are able to overcome collective active problems to pressure politicians to forbear. [And if the poor do have the political power she suggests, why don’t they demand more institutionalized solutions? Her explanation is that the poor don’t view promises for formal welfare policies as credible and so opt for forbearance instead, but the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The examples provided of exits from the “forbearance trap” -- so-called because interests in non-enforcement become entrenched -- are due to the exogenous shifts of economic growth in Turkey and repression in Chile. Once the state credibly provides …show more content…
Her choice for the front cover of Forbearance as Redistribution is a photograph of a squatter settlement that the artist, Dionisio González, has edited to include modern architectural features, challenging our expectations about what these informal communities do, can, or should look like. In describing the piece, Holland says that “art, perhaps more than political science, inspires people to see differently” (xii). This may be true of much of academia. However, Holland herself certainly cannot be accused of pursuing a narrow or unimportant research question. Much like the photograph, she gives her readers a new mental model for how the political world works for the urban