Ciência Política

The historical formation of organized domestic workers stems from the way in which Brazilian democracy is constituted against and how the state relates to society. The cities are not only the backdrops against which the unions form, but also the site of how the interrelationships among the state, labor and various forms of inequality emerge. My case studies of domestic workers' organizing in Brasília, São Paulo, and Salvador show a particular silence in the way in which inclusive policies for representation and accountability have emerged in Brazil over the course of its democratic development and the subsequent myths around race, class and labor arise. During major political events in late 19th and 20th century Brazil including the abolition of slavery, lapsed democracy during periods of authoritarian rule, the Comprehensive Labor Code of 1942, labor reforms of the 1970s and the 1988 democratic constitution, domestic workers were formally excluded from the rights of other workers. My dissertation is rooted in the following question: how is it that marginalized groups sustain a consciousness of political rights when the state has historically been unwilling to provide them? Unlike singular issues of labor, racial discrimination, or gendered exclusion, of which there is substantial literature on each category, but none of which that treats all of them simultaneously, the lengthy silence on domestic workers makes clear the difficulties of the state and academics to confront multi-layered questions of race, gender and labor in Brazilian democratic politics.

Despite the popular adage that blacks do not vote for blacks, using original survey data, I find that Afro-Brazilians in Salvador and São Paulo who identify as black (preto or negro) vote for black politicians more than Afro-Brazilians who claim lighter colors. This is a significant finding because it means that Afro-Brazilians do not choose identities idly. Rather, identifying as black is a form of black consciousness. In Salvador, the most cited black (negro) politician was President Lula and in Sao Paulo, it was Celso Pitta. Racialization is the process of attaching meaning to places or people. Efforts by black movement activists or organizations that promote positive images of blackness and Africaness can lead to positive racialization. Most Afro-Brazilians who named Lula as a black politician, think positively of black men. These Afro-Brazilians have the ability to positively racialize prestigious occupations as places blacks can occupy. Afro-Brazilians who named Lula are younger and middle-aged. Most Afro-Brazilians who identified Lula as black self-identify as negro. It is likely that negros identified Lula because of his support of racial policies. My hypothesis is that in cities with middle-class Afro-Brazilians, leftist politicians who identify as black (negro) or are identified by others as politically black, will use racial cues. I am correct in some cases and not in others. Some politicians in conservative parties use racial appeals. Others were not identified as black. In Salvador and São Paulo, politicians who use explicit racial appeals discuss racism and racial policies. Politicians who use implicit racial cues refer to culture. In Salvador, they usually refer to Candomblé, an African-derived religion. A traditional notion of Afro-Brazilian culture is used in Salvador. Modern cultural notions of blackness such as Hip Hop are used in São Paulo.

The dissertation provides an empirically grounded analysis of the challenges and limitations in urban governance, by exploring why some city governments are able to create and sustain, through the years, an institutional framework conducive to urban development, while others remain locked in damaging policies. It examines how governance is enhanced or constrained by local politics in urban centers where levels of economic development are among the highest in the country, have similar political structures, share comparable historical patterns, and are equally subject to the national political economy. The study is based on several months of fieldwork in two Brazilian state capitals, employing a variety of research strategies, including interviews, the examination of policy documents, public opinion polls. It is supported by quantitative indicators. The dissertation is based on a theoretical framework focused on local governments' capabilities, more specifically on their ability to put in place an institutional structure conducive to a more favorable policy environment. I argue that there are three critical variables shaping the policy process: political commitment, governing alliances and government's organizational skills. The existence of these public entrepreneurial attitudes increases the likelihood of more successful government actions, by allowing the governing group to escape from a vicious circle of damaging policies. I support my argument with an empirical analysis of the policy formation process of two cities' governments—São Paulo and Curitiba—in a 25-year period. The study contributes both to the literature on the policy implications of democratization and the broad field of international political economy. The findings show that—so far—democracy has not proven to be a catalyst for change in Brazil, in terms of the ability of governments to govern better. In addition, urban poverty, one of the developing world's greatest afflictions, remains as an almost intractable issue. However, with consistent municipal programs, supported by public consensus, local governments can mitigate the hardships of the urban poor.

This study analyzed the structure and performance of the main regional telecommunications sectors of the Philippines and Brazil under different ownership structures. Poor performance was the common thread between these two companies and was analyzed in the context of three variables: ownership, market structure and regulation at the primary level, and contextual variables such as culture, and political and economic structure at the secondary level. The study found that institutional idiosyncrasies at the state and the firm level in Brazil and the Philippines largely explained the performance of the telecommunications companies in both countries. Specifically, the historically poor performance and low investment of the Philippine Long Distance phone company in the Philippines can be attributed, for the most part, to profit-maximizing measures that meant the exclusion of non-profitable areas such as the local telephone network; corrupt practices that siphoned and shifted profits elsewhere; and a weak regulatory and political environment that was unable to enforce compliance with positive incentives. The performance and investment patterns of the Sao Paulo state company, Telesp, can be attributed for the most part, to the political and economic policies at the national and state level and the political/regulatory structure of the Telebras system. Mismanagement and corruption at the ministerial and firm level, while exacerbating the poor performance, played a less crucial role in the firm's overall performance than it did in the case of the Philippine Long Distance Company.

How do states regulate drug trafficking? The sale of illicit drugs generates an estimated US$870 billion per year – more than 1 percent of global GDP. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people die annually from drug-related violence and ensuing state repression. While national-level governments establish the normative framework regarding drug trafficking, subnational governments carry out the lion’s share of drug enforcement, confiscating drugs, arresting (or killing) dealers and traffickers, or brokering peace bargains with, or extracting rents from drug gangs. Despite the recent immersion of political scientists into the study of drug trafficking, we have yet to explain how and why subnational governments choose the strategies they do when dealing with this organized criminal activity. This dissertation analyzes subnational states’ different approaches to drug trafficking, or drug trafficking regulatory arrangements. Most studies of drug trafficking and its associated violence treat the state as a unitary actor and neglect the role of the police, despite the latter’s fundamental importance (and discretion) in enforcing legislation related to drug trafficking and organized crime. By contrast, I propose that different types of interactions between subnational politicians, primarily governors, and their police forces influence state responses to drug trafficking, with differing consequences with respect to state and criminal violence as well as police corruption. Understanding the state’s regulation of drug trafficking requires incorporating the interests and strategies of police forces –which may well conflict with those of their political superiors- into empirical studies. I argue that subnational patterns of political competition shape the state’s regulation of drug trafficking in metropolitan areas by affecting police levels of autonomy. Two aspects of competition are central in shaping police force’s autonomy: the extent to which the same party remains in power over time (political turnover) and the dispersal of political power in a given period (political fragmentation). The different combinations of turnover, fragmentation and police autonomy yield four types of regulatory arrangements: tacit coexistence, protection-extraction rackets, particularistic negotiation and particularistic confrontation, which differ with respect to police violence, corruption and criminal violence. Low political turnover reduces police autonomy and generates coordinated regulatory arrangements -tacit coexistence and protection-extraction rackets. Entrenched governments are able to implement and sustain autonomy-reducing police reforms, or gain the necessary leverage to extract cooperation from the force. Fragmentation, in turn, affects the governments’ stance toward police rent extraction. Under conditions of low turnover, low fragmentation motivates incumbents to politicize the police and appropriate its rents from trafficking, while high fragmentation compels them to professionalize the force and restrict its rent extraction, as political rivals can either monitor the government’s extraction or compete for police rents. With low fragmentation, governments centralize police rents from drug trafficking and control violence through protection-extraction rackets. By contrast, when fragmentation is higher, governments reach tacit coexistence agreements with organized criminal actors, in which police and gangs restrain their mutual confrontation. Both cases exhibit lower state and criminal violence, while differing in their relative levels of corruption. By contrast, frequent changes in administration (high turnover) undermine both governments’ capacity to sustain reforms and their leverage over the police, increasing police autonomy and generating uncoordinated regulatory arrangements, i.e. particularistic negotiation or particularistic confrontation. In this situation, high fragmentation might obstruct reformist initiatives or spark political competition for police rents, while low fragmentation is insufficient to reduce police autonomy. These arrangements are defined by either fragmented corruption deals between police officers and traffickers (particularistic negotiation) or dispersed attacks by police squads against drug gangs (particularistic confrontation). Both regulatory types result in high levels of criminal violence while diverging in their levels of state-driven violence. I test this theory with a subnational comparative research design, focusing on the main metropolitan areas of Argentina –the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe- and Brazil –the federal units of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Relying on interviews with politicians, police officers, and actors from civil society, as well as on document analysis of newspapers, NGO reports and government briefs, I conduct process tracing to examine the within-case variation of each subnational case since the return of democracy, a period of over 30 years. This dissertation’s findings of how political turnover and fragmentation influence police autonomy and, through it, shape drug trafficking regulatory arrangements have several implications, not just for thinking about the state’s response to organized crime but for the relationship between political competition and public security, and the role of police in democracies with weak institutions.

This dissertation analyzes the effectiveness of institutions for nature conservation by studying the management of environmentally protected areas in the State of São Paulo, Brazil in the last two decades. Using the issue of illegal human occupation to guide research in four protected areas, the dissertation addresses the question of how management has confronted the disjunction between legislation barring occupation and the reality of occupation on the ground in these areas. I examine the legal, governmental, and practical structures for the administration of protected areas. The research finds that government agencies relegated decisionmaking responsibilities on human occupation to the managers and staff of protected areas. The staff, in turn, developed informal measures and agreements to attempt reconciliation of occupation and the legal mandate. These unofficial strategies were often plagued by inconsistency and other weaknesses.

Based on ethnographic field research conducted in the summer of 2014, this thesis explores how Bolivian migrants garner rights and recognition in São Paulo, Brazil. By performing a Bolivian ethnonational identity in São Paulo public space, migrants reflect municipal government priorities of social inclusion and multiculturalism to emerge as meritorious citizens. Alongside cultural displays, migrants leverage new institutional channels of political participation to negotiate their relationship with São Paulo municipal and Bolivian state representatives. Chapter One explores the two dominant spaces associated with Bolivian migration in São Paulo — the garment workshop and the weekly ethnic market of Praça Kantuta. Chapter Two analyzes the intersection between Bolivian cultural celebrations and migrant political agendas. Through the ethnic market and cultural celebrations, Bolivian migrant elites emerge as representatives of a Bolivian collectivity, paper over intra-community class dynamics, and divert attention from exploitative labor practices in the garment industry. Chapter Three analyzes emigrant claims-making of Bolivian state representatives following the extension of emigrant voting rights in the 2009 Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

Working where social and labor history intersect with political and electoral history, this dissertation challenges the prevailing consensus on Latin American populism which portrayed a passive working class manipulated by the state and elites. A community- level study of the ABC region of greater Sao Paulo, this dissertation focuses on the internal dynamics and external relationships that underlay the emergence of a populist project, rhetoric, and political system. The anarchist anti-politics of Sao Paulo's emerging labor move- ment in the First Republic was shaped by employer/state repression and the disproportionate influence, within the workers' movement, of non-factory labor. The politicization of labor's strategies after 1920, exemplified by its search for non-working-class allies, reflected labor's organizing difficulties and the needs of a growing industrial working class. The legalization of a form of government-linked trade unionism after 1930, although restrictive, offered workers' new possibilities while industrialists resisted state intervention in labor relations; thus creating a partial coincidence of interests between labor and a centralizing national state. This potential working-class constituency underlay the emerging populist project of president Getulio Vargas. Marginalized by his elite opponents in 1945, Vargas gambled boldly by massively enfran- chising and mobilizing urban workers. Workers' widespread popular getulismo coincided with a class politics based on trade unions and the Communist Party of Luis Carlos Prestes- which, together with Getulio's Brazilian Labor Party, received three-quarters of ABC's votes. The subsequent explosion of working-class militancy and aggres- sive trade unionism contradicts the prevailing view of a corporatist unionism dependent upon the state. While triggering an anti-populist backlash by the elite, the newly-mobilized urban working-class vote became the basis for the upset victory of Adhemar de Barros in the 1947 state gubernatorial elections. In ending traditional boss rule, Adhemar's victory set the terms for the state's unique political system during the populist republic that was ended in 1964. With the labor left curbed in 1948, a transi- tion took place to a fully populist electoral system within ABC which revolved around a new relationship between workers and the middle class.

This dissertation explores the contributions and limitations of gentrification theory to understand processes of upward urban redevelopment in São Paulo, Brazil. To this end, I develop a definition of gentrification that maintains its analytical consistency while also providing sufficient elasticity to illuminate diverging contexts. I apply this framework to two case studies in São Paulo that were locally recognized as experiencing gentrification. Ultimately, this research explores both the relevance of existing gentrification theory and the local meanings that it has assumed. Drawing on the classical and global definitions of gentrification, the analytical framework identifies three necessary dimensions common to all cases, even if mediating structures make their materialization context-specific. They are: (1) production of gentrifiable space; (2) upward socio-economic change with displacement; and (3) built environment upgrades. The two case studies in São Paulo expose the challenges of the straightforward importation of theory in each of these dimensions. First, the local urbanization pattern does not follow the central city disinvestment and suburbanization process of classical cases. Second, the presence of urban informality results in the displacement of both formal and informal residents. Third, in scenarios where apartments are valuable housing options, built environment upgrades promote verticalization and corporate developers become “pioneer” gentrifiers. Finally, by focusing on the state as a key mediating structure of gentrification, the case studies analyze the dynamics of one private-led and one state-led upward redevelopment process. In the first case, the state becomes an enabler by providing the support needed for gentrification to happen. By establishing a partnership with the private sector in the second case, the state becomes an entrepreneur, creating and benefiting from a speculative real estate market. Instead of reifying a homogeneous and invariable pro-market approach, though, they demonstrate the multiple and conflictive goals mediated and legitimized by the state and that can limit the impact of displacement. To be clear, these are indeed gentrification cases given the evidence of the necessary dimensions of the analytical framework. However, they posit the need to contextualize our understandings of gentrification since interactions between local and global patterns may alter the process over space and time.

This dissertation explores immigrant entrepreneurship in the garment industry of São Paulo, Brazil. Brazil is the fourth largest producer of garments. Most of the production is directed at local consumption, through mostly small and medium size retailing stores and producers. I research two communities in particular: Bolivians and Koreans. Entrepreneurs from both communities form the backbone of the industry, yet their activity has recently come under governmental scrutiny. Because of cases of slave-like labor involving undocumented Bolivian workers, the government has started enforcing labor laws. The impacts of those inspections on the targeted immigrant groups have seldom been researched. In fact, very little has been written about Koreans and Korean entrepreneurs in Brazil. This dissertation seeks to answer the following research questions: How do immigrant entrepreneurs in this industry perceive and adapt to a situation where they are accused of abuses by a very bureaucratic state? What factors influence their perceptions?