Embeddedness and cohesion: regimes of urban public goods distribution

Abstract

Why do some urban governing regimes realize a more equal distribution of public goods than others? Local government interventions in São Paulo, Brazil, have produced surprisingly effective redistribution of residential public goodshousing and sanitationbetween 1989 and 2016. I use original interviews and archival research for a comparative-historical analysis of variation across time in São Paulo's governance of housing and sanitation. I argue that sequential configurations of a) "embeddedness" of the local state in civil society and b) the "cohesion" of the institutional sphere of the local state, explain why and when urban governing regimes generate the coordinating capacity to distribute public goods on a programmatic basis. I further illustrate how these configurations can explain variation in urban governing regimes across the world. Keywords Bureaucracy . Governance . Housing . Movements . Sanitation . Urban inequality From a "new urban crisis" (Florida, 2017) in the United States, to a "planet of slums" (Davis, 2006) across the globe, unequal access to public goods pervades urban life. The scholarly tendency has been to explain urban exclusions as determined by the structural role of cities in the globalized integration of markets (Brenner & Theodore, 2002). Even so, democracy creates the possibility for alternative distributions of social power to address inequalities (Usmani, 2018). Explaining the distribution of public goods in democratic cities begs for variation-finding approaches. Why do some urban governing regimes realize a more equal distribution of public goods than others?This article proposes conceptual tools for answering this question through a comparative and historical study of a "least likely case" (Gerring, 2005) for improvements in including previously excluded residents into the built environment of public goods in the city. São Paulo, Brazil, the fourteenth most populous city in the world, grewTheory and Society

Parties, Civil Society and Democratic Deepening: Comparing India, Brazil and South Africa

“…These transformations in basic state–society modes of engagement come into sharp focus at the municipal level. Beginning in the 1990s, Brazilian cities, having been significantly strengthened as developmental actors through the 1988 constitution, have made significant progress in upgrading slums, providing social housing, expanding public transport and universalizing access to basic services (Bradlow, 2021; Gibson, 2018). This new form of local state embeddedness was initiated in large party through participatory structures such as participatory budgeting and sectoral councils, which provided spaces through which civil society organizations and movements could play a direct role in shaping and implementing new policies (Baiocchi et al, 2008).…”

“…When in power, the PT, itself a product of civil society, claimed a patented model of governing ( o modo petista de governor ) that included a procedural commitment to ‘incorporating and even institutionalising popular participation in decision-making’ (Hochstetler, 2004, p. 8). A varied literature has documented not only the capacity of civil society actors to make demands and push policies, but also clear instances of civil society projecting itself into the state to shape state intervention (Bradlow, 2021; Gibson, 2018; Rich, 2019). Civil society pressures have resulted in the institutionalization of a wide range of participatory structures and the strengthening of local democratic government (Baiocchi et al, 2008; Wampler, 2015).…”

Democracy in the Global South

“…The works on movement activists by Mische (2009), Gibson (2018), Paschel (2016), and Agarwala (2013) take a similar line by carefully exploring patterns of iterated engagements between activists and political institutions and how, in the process, activists and movement organizations develop the skills, capacities, and networks to balance the communicative practices of cross-cutting movement structures with the strategic necessity of staking out pragmatic or partisan positions. In his study of São Paulo, Bradlow (2021) examines how one of the most spatially unequal cities in the world was able to extend public housing, public transport, and sanitation to the urban poor. Examining a 20-year period during which right and left governments alternated in power, Bradlow shows not only that movement activists exerted constant pressure on municipal officials to deliver but that, in doing so, they helped municipal agencies develop greater interagency cohesion and effectiveness.…”

“…Sociologists have precisely the tools necessary to study this fabric, but doing so requires more intensive and closer examination of not just national institutions but also the subnational and local arenas in which democracy is practiced (or subverted) and citizens are made (Glenn 2011, Somers 1993. There have been some important and exciting recent contributions (Carter 2012, Levien 2018, Marques 2021, Roychowdhury 2020, Veeraraghan 2021,Vijayakumar 2021, including a rapidly growing body of work on cities of the Global South (Bradlow 2021, Garrido 2019, Goldfrank 2011, Ren 2018, Weinstein 2009), but the terrain remains vast and diverse and calls for innovative research strategies.…”

“…That reframing includes a more comparative and nonteleological historical understanding of democratic trajectories; a more relational perspective that views democracy as more than electoral competition and, in particular, recognizes the role of civil society in shaping preferences and constituting political actors; and a defining preoccupation with how democracy is shaped by and can in turn transform social and economic power. Methodologically, sociology's unique contribution is the diversity and breadth of research ranging from macro analyses providing a global-system perspective on democratization (e.g., Castells 2003), careful quantitative assessments that go beyond electoral results (Kadivar 2018, Usmani 2018, comparative-historical work (Kurzman 2008, Mahoney 2001, Moore 1966, Rueschemeyer et al 1992, Sandbrook et al 2007, comparative subnational investigations (Baiocchi et al 2011, Bradlow 2021, Gibson 2018, deep field investigations exploring the relational and lived experiences of democratic life (Auyero 2001, Garrido 2019, Rao & Sanyal 2010, Roychowdhury 2020, Sanyal 2014, and a whole new range of research that examines the intersection of domestic and global fields of democratic action (Ciplet et al 2015, Graizbord 2017, Paschel 2016, Santos & Rodríguez-Garavito 2005.…”