Ciência Política

A presente dissertação busca investigar, sob um viés constitucional e de promoção da cidadania, as políticas públicas desenvolvidas para as pessoas em situação de rua dependentes de crack, que permanecem pelas cenas de uso da droga conhecida como crack no bairro da Luz, na região central da cidade de São Paulo e que é conhecida popularmente como Cracolândia. Em um primeiro momento, foi realizada a caracterização jurídica das pessoas em situação de rua e dos dependentes de drogas. Também foi estudada a formação histórica das primeiras cenas de uso do crack no bairro da Luz e as ações governamentais que se seguiram, principalmente na década de 1990 e nos anos 2000. Verificou-se detalhadamente cada política pública realizada (principalmente os conceitos da Operação Centro Legal em face do programa de Braços Abertos e do Programa Recomeço) e a forma como houve a violação ou a promoção da cidadania dos dependentes de crack em situação de rua. Em um segundo momento, mantendo como referenciais teóricos as pesquisas de Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, de Gianpaolo Poggio Smanio, de Patrícia Tuma Bertolin e com lentes no campo de pesquisa dos fundamentos jurídicos das políticas públicas, foi objeto de estudo o modo como se deram as ações governamentais, nos seus diversos planos de ação institucional (macro, meso e micro). Ao final do trabalho, essas mesmas políticas públicas ainda foram estudadas sob o ponto de vista de sua efetividade e seus resultados, além das suas perspectivas futuras, sempre com vistas à obtenção de um diagnóstico que pudesse apontar fundamentos de melhora no ciclo das políticas públicas como um todo para esta área.

This thesis examines the potential impact of community oriented policing in Latin America through a series of case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and El Salvador dating from the early 1990's to the present. They are analyzed through a typology that organizes community oriented policing strategies according to costliness to the police. Costliness is defined as the amount of power that the police have to renounce to the community to implement a certain strategy. The thesis concludes that community oriented policing is an improvement over militarized policing strategies as it has the possibility to enhance both human security and state legitimacy in the region.

Although sustainable frameworks for transportation have been widely discussed in the transportation planning field in recent decades, the issue of equity in transportation systems is still relatively unexplored in comparison to the other pillars of sustainability. Globally, the concept of equity gains different nuances in developed and developing countries, and have yet new implications when considering fast emerging nations. The objective of this paper is to investigate how transit policies in fast emerging economies are used to distribute equitable access to benefits and opportunities; and to derive lessons that can orient future cohorts of emerging cities and countries to use transit as means to provide equitable improvements in accessibility. Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) have been treated as a unit since the turn of the millennium when economic analysts noticed similar patterns of extraordinary productivity and growth, and are the forerunners of a group of nations expected to become major economic actors on the global stage in a few decades. Case studies on the most populous and prominent metropolises of the BRIC countries were conducted, exploring three aspects of transit systems as they impact equity: system ownership and planning processes; mode predominance and choices; and fare structures and collection methods. Sao Paulo, Moscow, Mumbai and Shanghai were selected as case studies subjects because of their location in those fast emerging nations and because of their status as recognized global cities. This investigation revealed emerging nations are trying to equip their transit systems to deal with the pressures of growing population size and density, rising incomes, increasing rates of private automobile ownership and sprawling land use patterns. In order to cope with this new and fast changing environment, subjects sought to engage in long-range transportation planning, partnered with private entities for the provision of capital investment or operations, acted to strengthen (or implement) heavy rail as the anchor-mode, and moved towards automated fare collection methods. Lessons derived from these cities will serve to provide guidelines to equitable transit programs in fast emerging cities across the developed world that facing similar pressures, and to orient future research towards more complete economic efficiency evaluations of transit systems in emerging countries.

Comprehensive work on the urban and social transformation that took place over the four centuries of São Paulo’s existence. The author points to the crucial moment of local urban growth, the 19th century, between two literary (or cultural) movements in the history of São Paulo: Romanticism and Modernism.

A presente pesquisa analisa a emergência de um líder petebista no Município de São João da Boa Vista (SP), durante os anos de 1950. De nome Miguel Jorge Nicolau, oriundo de uma família de imigrantes árabe-libanesa, iniciou sua trajetória na vida pública a partir de seu quotidiano em uma fábrica têxtil da cidade (Fiatece), cujos trabalhadores eram fundamentalmente mulheres. Apesar da comunidade árabe-libanesa ser vista com certas reservas por parte daquela população interiorana, a que se acresciam particularidades pouco convencionais de sua vida pessoal, Miguel Jorge Nicolau tornou-se um homem público. Elegeu-se para a prefeitura da cidade e tornou-se o representante regional do PTB na Assembleia Legislativa, na qualidade de Deputado Estadual. Desde 1953 foi vigiado pela polícia política, como um perigoso comunista infiltrado no PTB ou um risco à segurança nacional, e, em 1964, teve seus direitos políticos cassados. A documentação utilizada para esta pesquisa constituiu-se de entrevistas, notícias de jornais, Anais da Assembleia Legislativa. Destacamos destes dois últimos acervos, seus artigos e discursos.

My dissertation examines why different immigrant groups, particularly those that do not currently face much economic discrimination, on average, choose different strategies of political assimilation by the third generation. The answers to this question are important to understanding the political integration of immigrant groups of all income levels. The primary argument I make is that racial or ethnic identifications that result from experiencing discrimination often explain political behaviors and attitudes among immigrant groups. First, I argue that membership in a relatively exclusive ethnic group experiencing discrimination is associated with ethnic voting. Second, consistent with and extending Mary Waters’ (1996) argument, I argue that non-white immigrant groups are more inclined to support race-based government measures, such as racial quotas for university admissions and government jobs that benefit other non-white groups because of personal experiences and awareness of racial discrimination in society. Furthermore, I argue that the agricultural cooperatives on which the first Japanese and Jewish immigrants worked provided them the social capital to form other ethnic community-based organizations, which facilitated their political incorporation in Brazil. This is an advantage not shared by current economic immigrants, and Catholic NGOs step in to help these current immigrants overcome this disadvantage.

Despite Brazil's constitutional commitment to housing for all, the country's most populous city—São Paulo—has only experienced a growth in the number of slum dwellers and a decline in municipal investments in slum upgrading. Development literature suggests that this dilemma reflects the capacity and/or will of interested parties in building fiscal space to address poverty problems. However, this study asks whether the questions asked in such literature are sufficient in explaining why poverty reduction projects and development investments like slum upgrading are losing ground in places like Brazil. What are the fundamental assumptions and privileges inherent in current development debates and how do they influence planning outcomes? The hypothesis presented here is that the current interpretation of fiscal responsibility and practices of public sector accounting reveal a fundamental bias against social investments like slum upgrading. Using the city of São Paulo's municipal financial statements between 1995 and 2005 for empirical evidence, I argue that the for-profit motivation shaping current public sector accounting practices often leads to a decline in much needed social investments. In short, what is captured in accounts, how it is captured, and what is not captured all matter. Secondly, current accounting practices energize an unproductive cycle in which perverse adaptations of "fiscal responsibility" on the local front are increasingly fed by and feed stringent administrative guidelines at the national and international levels. This perverse cyclical dynamic and decline in social investments critically hamper planning for and the realization of development goals—all while creating an illusion of fiscal responsibility—and an incomplete vision of fiscal responsibility at that. Though of course political struggles and strategic visions of economic development are key shapers of policies affecting slum upgrading, decision making processes and scholarly debates in such development planning projects increasingly rest on what are termed hard data. Accounting practices produce and report this data and in doing so influence the scope of what is deemed fiscally possible and appropriate in development planning. As São Paulo reveals, planners must reexamine current accounting practices, the effects of interpretations of fiscal responsibility, and the resulting often deceptive hard data.

This study analyzes the problem of police violence in Brazil and Argentina, observing how it affects the relationship between poor communities and the state. The conclusions are based on field research in two shantytowns: Villa 31 de Retiro in Buenos Aires and Heliópolis in São Paulo, comparing their experiences with police violence and political participation. The study describes how political organizations, neighborhood associations, and civil groups responded to the continuities of repressive policing strategies in poor areas of both cities. It analyzes the participatory channels opened in São Paulo and Buenos Aires and the advances and setbacks in protecting vulnerable communities from violence. The main argument in this thesis is that the measures taken by governments to increase participation in São Paulo and Buenos Aires failed to protect citizens in the poor neighborhoods analyzed, as states established contradicting relationships with these communities, at times through repression and violence, and at times through clientelism and particularism. The thesis concludes that in order to successfully promote citizen security and reduce state violence in poor neighborhoods, more effective channels of community participation need to be established, leveraging local demands within the decision-making process in public security.

The dissertation deals with problems of planning and governmental organization in metropolitan areas. It concentrates on the conditions in developing countries by studying a case of urban policy implementation in Brazil, where metropolitan administrations were established in nine regions. Questions related to planning policies and to organizational arrangements for metropolitan governance are discussed, characterizing a joint disciplinary approach of urban planning and public administration. Different strategies of governmental organization are analyzed in relation to Brazilian conditions, in view of which a specific arrangement is proposed, consisting of a regional council backed by one or more technical agencies to carry out regional programs. This is treated a macro-organizational level of analysis in metropolitan affairs. The micro-organizational level deals with the design and management of regional agencies; contingency theory in organizational analysis provides the basis for a model of structural design of such agencies, in which the external activities to be performed are associated to different internal organizational designs. This model is used in the evaluation of the performance of three Brazilian metropolitan agencies: Sao Paulo's EMPLASA, Rio de Janeiro's FUNDREM, and Porto Alegre's METROPLAN. Both their implementation processes and the outcomes of their activities are assessed in these case studies. The evaluation helps underline the key variables in the institutionalization of public agencies, a process found to be critically dependent on the capacity of these agencies to adapt to changes in their institutional environment. A comparative analysis of the outcomes of the metropolitan agencies' programs, by sectors of activity, is included to provide a perspective on issues in the planning agenda and on the effects of different policies and strategies pursued by the Brazilian agencies. The study concludes with recommendations on how to improve the performance of metropolitan institutions as well as on means for implementing urban planning policies in Brazil, which can be applied in other developing countries with similar conditions.

This thesis examines the impact of Basic Christian Communities (comunidades eclesiais de base or CEBs) and liberation theology on cultural and political change in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It examines subjective interpretations of liberationist themes and political messages, as well as the political participation, of CEB members. Characteristics of the members, particularly gender identity and personal religious orientation, are shown to influence members' interpretations, as well as their subjective construction of political actions. The CEBs have had limited success in communicating their religious and political messages to all except one subgroup, people-concerned religionists. The groups have been more successful, however, in encouraging one type of political activity: social movements. This can be explained by the fact that these movements appeal to the common gender identity of all types of women religionists. Thus, the conclusion indicates that both gender and religious orientation must be considered in order to account for the pattern of limited attitudinal change coupled with more successful, though still limited, political mobilization. It also suggests the need to pay more attention to theories of the "middle range" to explain successes, failures, and reinterpretation of new ideas propagated by cultural entrepreneurs such as liberation theologians.