Ciência Política

The emergence of new participatory mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting, in towns and cities in recent years has given rise to a conflict between the old protagonists of local participation and the new citizens invited to participate. These mechanisms offer a logic of collective action different from what has been the usual fare in cities — one based on proposal rather than demand. As a result, urban social movements need to transform their own dynamics in order to make room for a new political subject (the citizenry and the non-organized participant) and to act upon a stage where deliberative dynamics now apply. This article aims to analyse this conflict in three different cities that set up participatory budgeting at different times: Porto Alegre, Cordova and Paris. The associations in the three cities took up a position against the new participatory mechanisms and demanded a bigger role in the political arena. Through a piece of ethnographic research, we shall see that the responses of the agents involved (politicians, associations and citizens) in the three cities share some arguments, although the conflict was resolved differently in each of them. The article concludes with reflections on the consequences this conflict could have for contemporary political theory, especially with respect to the role of associations in the processes of democratization and the setting forth of a new way of doing politics by means of deliberative procedures.

Social Forums, modeled on the World Social Forums, are not social movements in the classic sense. They are not, and do not purport to be, the organizational form through which basic social change will be achieved, or can best be pursued. But they do bring together elements of many social movements, afford an opportunity for coalition-building among them, frequently around urban issues, and thus make a significant contribution to achieving such change. Conceivably they may be the foundation for an international social movement for change, but if so it is likely to coalesce about a specifically political program. Some concrete suggestions are made which might enhance their effectiveness.

Over the last two decades, numerous international conferences and organizations have espoused managing water as an economic good, involving participatory forums in systems of decentralized management at the river-basin level. In the 1990s, Brazil adopted such a model. More than a simple transfer of power from the national to the local level or from bureaucratic to deliberative decision-making, however, this process requires multi-directional power transfers among a variety of policy arenas and actors and among national, state, municipal and river-basin institutions, as well as a complex — and ongoing — negotiation over the meanings of both water pricing and participation. Focusing on the politics of reform legislation in the state of São Paulo and nationally, the article examines how political-institutional features of federalism and executive-legislative relations constrained the passage of reform legislation, and how pro-reform actors attempted to surmount such institutional limitations with networking strategies and by fostering incremental changes in practices on the ground.

This article deals with the state policies of urban infrastructure in São Paulo, Brazil, from 1975 to 2000. Working with primary information about the investments made by the state in public works, we discuss a series of arguments present in the urban studies literature about the patterns of state investment in urban spaces and propose an alternative explanation for state action in Brazilian urban spaces in recent decades. We analyze the main elements that have influenced the overall pattern of investments, describe the main characteristics of this policy over time and in each of the municipal governments of the period, as well as develop an evaluation of the spatial distribution of the resources among each of the main social groups in the city.

General consensus exists concerning the relevance of networks and space in poverty situations, despite a considerable dispute on the prominence of each element. While social-support and poverty debates highlight the joint importance of space and networks, the research agenda on contemporary communities suggests that networks have recently started replacing space in social integration. These debates mainly consider networks and ties normatively and are restricted to the global North, hampering the formulation of comparative interpretations and more theoretical conclusions. This article discusses the relationship between space, sociability and poverty, based on research results on networks of poor individuals in two major Brazilian metropolises — Salvador and São Paulo. Research indicates the existence of great heterogeneity in the networks of poor individuals, although with substantial differences, on average, to middle-class individuals. Certain types of networks and sociability are systematically associated with better living conditions, employment and income. Additionally, network mobilization by individuals presents important regularities associated with social mechanisms, understood as regular patterns that trigger or cause certain results. These mechanisms explain to a great extent the heterogeneity of networks, and mediate the individual's access to opportunities and everyday assistance. They therefore contribute decisively to the production (and reproduction) of urban poverty.

Brazilian cities have been the sites of significant experiments in participatory and deliberative governance. Participatory budgeting has to be singled out as one of the most important of these. After the landmark experience in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has been expanded to 170 Brazilian cities. Is the expansion of participatory budgeting equivalent to the expansion of the deliberative and distributive characteristics of the Porto Alegre experience? This article argues that the conditions that account for the emergence of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre are unique to that city’s social or political characteristics. It focuses on the role of existing civil society associations in the emergence of participatory budgeting, as well as in its institutional format. It also shows that the presence of civic associations is linked to the deliberative and distributive results of participatory budgeting and that these conditions may not be present in other participatory budgeting experiences.

This paper presents the results of an international research project completed by the University of Geneva in partnership the ILO and consultants. This applied research project analyses whether the concept of decent work is known and applied by local authorities in their policy definition and project implementation in the construction sector and related services. This interdisciplinary research project involves a wide-ranging study of documentary sources and four case studies in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Santo André (Brazil), and Esmeraldas (Ecuador). This paper briefly summarises the aims and rationale of this research project, the hypothesis tested and key research questions related to it. Then it briefly summarises the findings which clearly show that decent work remains a marginal concept which has not been widely applied at the international, national and local levels. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for the improved dissemination and application of decent work.

This paper discusses social housing policy in Brazil since the 1990s by analyzing government programs’ institutional arrangements, their sources of revenues and the formatting of related financial systems. The conclusion suggests that all these arrangements have not constituted a comprehensive housing policy with the clear aim of serving to enhance housing conditions in the country. Housing ‘policies’ since the 1990s – as proposed by Fernando Collor de Mello, Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s governments (in the latter case, despite much progress towards subsidized investment programs) – have sought to consolidate financial instruments in line with global markets, restructuring the way private interests operate within the system, a necessary however incomplete course of action. Different from rhetoric, this has resulted in failure as the more fundamental social results for the poor have not yet been achieved.

Emerging from the global city literature of the 1980s and 1990s, a vast scholarship has developed that embraces the ‘dual city’ concept as a useful analytical tool for explaining how global transformations produce polarization within cities. However, less is known about how local policies shape uneven patterns of development. Through an examination of Rio de Janeiro's Favela Pacification Program, we argue that state-level public policies play a significant role in institutionalizing duality. The recent military occupation of the slums in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates how the historically and politically contextualized public policy of confrontation has exacerbated tensions between the city's elites and poor residents along a number of social, economic, and political dimensions. Local policymakers can influence the impact of globalization on social polarization by considering the effects of public policies on spatial justice.

The objective of this article is to analyze the implementation of climate change related policies by subnational governments in 3 countries: Japan (Mie Prefecture), Germany (Saxony-Anhalt) and Brazil (São Paulo). Through an empirical research, the article develops the 3 cases to understand the achievements and obstacles to implement mitigation and adaptation policies. The cases provide an interesting sample, including countries that range from a developed country more pro-active in environmental international negotiations (Germany) to a more conservative developed country (Japan) and a developing country (Brazil). The results have pointed that, as compared to adaptation, mitigation policies (such as energy conservation) have a much longer implementation history and government support at the subnational level, especially in more progressive governments, but adaptation policies have gained space in the policy agenda recently because of the increasing public interest. The success of implementation of climate related policies is linked to the way they are integrated with sectorial policies, with policies of other levels of government, with civil society and within themselves (integration of mitigation–adaptation policies).