Building on the methodological and empirical contributions of the various authors in this special symposium, this concluding reflection acknowledges the important role that informality plays in urban and national politics in the global South, even as it proposes a range of alternative ways, this critical topic could and should be inserted into contemporary scholarship in comparative politics. It begins with a discussion of two decades of research on urbanization and economic globalization, thus introducing a wider set of disciplinary concerns than merely urban servicing into the study of informality, ranging from the transformation of property rights regimes in the context of ascendant neo-liberalization to the recent emergence of more decentralized political structures for claim-making and governance. The essay then suggests that greater historical and contextual specificity in the study of informality, along with the methodological innovations highlighted in the papers, will further help reveal the range of responses to informality seen across the different case studies. Specifically, it proposes that closer attention to divergent urban and national pathways of democratization, attention to institutional variations within and across democratic regimes, political party dynamics at the local and national level, and the existence of urban violence, among other factors, will help explain how and why bureaucrats and elected officials may choose to deal differently with the existence of informality. The essay concludes by arguing that informality should be considered as both a form of governance and a means of enacting citizenship. It thus asks scholars to question the longstanding conceptual dichotomies that permeate much of the literature on informality, including the stark conceptual divide between the formal and informal, and instead to recognize that complex, interactive, and iterative relationships between citizens and the state in the arena of informality are what drive urban servicing and sociopolitical change.

中文翻译：

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对“非正式政治”的反思：我们知道什么，我们如何到达那里，以及我们下一步可能走向何方

在本次特别研讨会上多位作者的方法论和实证贡献的基础上，这一结论性反思承认非正式性在全球南方的城市和国家政治中发挥的重要作用，即使它提出了一系列替代方法，这一关键主题可以并且应该被插入到当代比较政治学中。它首先讨论了二十年的城市化和经济全球化研究，从而将更广泛的学科关注点引入非正规性研究中，而不仅仅是城市服务，范围从方兴未艾的新自由化背景下的产权制度转变最近出现了更加分散的政治结构以进行主张和治理。然后，这篇文章表明，非正式性研究中更大的历史和背景特异性，以及论文中强调的方法论创新，将进一步有助于揭示不同案例研究中对非正式性的反应范围。具体而言，它建议密切关注不同的城市和国家民主化途径、关注民主政权内部和之间的制度差异、地方和国家层面的政党动态以及城市暴力的存在等因素，将有助于解释官僚和民选官员如何以及为何选择以不同方式处理非正式性的存在。这篇文章最后认为，非正式性应该被视为一种治理形式和一种制定公民身份的手段。