Читать книгу The Politics of Incremental Progressivism - Группа авторов - Страница 17

When we mention policy changes, the reader may call to mind the need for cities to have creative and innovative policy (and technical) solutions, such as light railways, cable cars, advanced public lighting, computerized traffic control, dedicated corridors, among others. The idea that technological developments are the key to resolving city problems is widely diffused. However, public policy studies have already demonstrated that while good solutions are essential, public policies are in fact about the production and delivery of services, goods and actions. From this point of view, great ideas for policy designs and solutions are only effective if they reach their users, which depends on the local configurations of actors and resources, as well as on the processes that produce policies. This is not to say that inventive policy solutions are not necessary, both in terms of policy products and concerning delivery structures and strategies. Therefore, solutions tend to travel badly and must be both appropriate, in the sense of fitting the situations at hand, and appropriated by the processes and actors involved. Policy change, in this sense, does not equal new policy solutions, although it may include them, as was the case of many policies in São Paulo. In all situations, however, they were accompanied by and/or embedded in public policy programs and delivered through policy processes. Unfortunately, these are much more difficult to produce and deliver than merely technical solutions and depend on the government and the coordination of multiple processes and actors.

Against the expectations of many, this book shows that São Paulo has indeed been governed since the return to democracy in Brazil, regardless of all its problems. More importantly, our cases show a slow trajectory of conflictual but incremental expansion of services and policies, along with an increase in their quality and government capacities over time, even though deep and durable inequalities remain. This incrementalism was punctuated several times by political decisions and conflicts that changed rhythms and directions of policy, and, more rarely, produced some reversals. Furthermore, different policies followed different paces, determined by their sectoral dynamics and actors, as well as their centralities within political agendas. Despite localized setbacks, however, the general pattern has been toward the creation of innovative redistributive policies with more and better services and regulation, as well as broader social participation. This is not to say that policies in the city are now accessible and of good quality to all citizens, but they have changed in positive directions across a broad set of policy fields. This outcome is especially intriguing since São Paulo is far from being a progressive city, whether measured by its electorate or by its political elites. In fact, since the return to democracy, mayoral elections have been won three times by the right, three times by the center‐right and three times by the left, while council elections have always tended to favor right and center‐right parties. Center‐right or right‐wing candidates also prevailed in the city in the most recent national elections.

A combination of political competition and policy production processes explain São Paulo's incremental trajectory of policy change. Each of these processes alone would probably lead to very different results. The comparative literature suggests that political competition alone may lead to a race to the bottom of clientelist practices (Herrera 2017), while, despite the hopes of many authors, civil society activism alone may produce visible mobilizations but rarely produces policy change without the necessary embeddedness in policy processes (Banaszak 2010; Abers 2019; Gurza Lavalle et al. 2019). On the other hand, the authoritarian experiences in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s confirm that strong and insulated State actors by themselves may imply technocratic reasoning and bureaucratic capture. It was the combination of these features that led policies in São Paulo toward incremental progressivism.

Political competition triggered two combined mechanisms that explain the actions and strategies of mayors and other local elite political actors: namely, partisan politics (Hubber and Stephens 2013) and median voter (Meltzer and Richard 1981) mechanisms. However, policies were produced and delivered in processes that involved local agencies, bureaucrats, private contractors and activists in different combinations according to policy. This foregrounds processes and feedback mechanisms not foreseen by traditional policy theories (Kingdom 1984; Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith 1993) to explain different policy rhythms and resilience. It is worth detailing each of these mechanisms before discussing the actors and processes involved in them in the next section.

Partisan politics theory suggests that increases in redistributive policies and State capacities under democracies usually occur during left‐wing governments due to their ideology (Levitsky and Roberts 2011; Hubber and Stephens 2013). This would explain the development of social and redistributive policies and the decline in inequality in Latin America during the so‐called “pink tide” in the 2000s. Similar results were found for urban policies in the United States by Hajnal and Trounstine (2017) and Einstein and Glick (2018) and road infrastructure policies in São Paulo by Marques (2003).

We define redistributive urban policies as those that reduce inequalities in access to services and amenities, improve service quality, and enhance the wellbeing of the poor. Obviously, financial and contributory (or not) features of policies influence their degrees of redistribution, but these go far beyond economic factors alone. Therefore, it is the overall design and functioning of policies that define their redistributive features. In mobility policies, for example, bus fare prices are essential, but the existence of smart cards is even more central since these allow multiple journeys with just a single fare or fares, irrespective of the traveled distance. Likewise, dedicated bus lanes or corridors can reduce the otherwise absurd travel times to segregated poor peripheries. Sometimes expanding services and improving quality are indissociable, but in other cases, these may advance separately or even at the expense of each other.

The presence of redistributive policies under specific governments clearly challenges classic public choice interpretations (Peterson 1982), which maintained that mayors would systematically seek to promote growth and avoid redistributive policies, in a fortunate convergence with political economy growth machine predictions (Molotch 1976). The lack of choices in local politics, however, has already been confronted by the urban regime and governance typologies that anticipated the existence of several types of regime, including redistributive (Stone 1993; Pierre 2011), depending on the composition of the electorate, local bureaucracies, and political conjunctures.

The policies we analyze here confirm the relevance of local politics, showing that redistributive policy changes, especially the more conflictive ones, mainly occurred under left‐wing administrations. Also in line with this theory, center governments produced a much lower but intermediary number of redistributive programs, while right‐wing administrations an almost negligible amount. Additionally, to be able to produce and implement these policies, left‐wing governments enlarged State capacities, creating reinforcement mechanisms in favor of these policies, as we discuss later.

On the other hand, median voter theory predicts that in democratic countries where most of the population is poor, or, put more technically, where median voter income is below the average income, all politicians will try to please poor voters, since they constitute the majority (Meltzer and Richard 1981). Both left and right‐wing administrations would converge, therefore, on producing redistributive policies, improving their quality, or at least avoiding policies that could harm these voters.⁶ Obviously, this convergence represents a tendency, and social mobilization and political pressure from above or below can reduce or intensify this tendency (Fairfield and Garay 2017), at the same time that institutional and economic constraints may reinforce this convergence independently of political ideology (Pasotti 2010a), such as balancing the budget or providing poor relief policies during periods of profound economic and social crisis, respectively.

In São Paulo, politicians and parties of different ideologies⁷ fiercely competed in majoritarian elections over an electorate mostly composed of low and mid‐low income voters, not to mention the pressures applied by social movements, especially those targeting housing and transportation. Consistently with median voter predictions, therefore, all governments tended to maintain policies that reduce urban inequalities (although still with higher intensity among the left), especially in less conflictive policy areas, such as expanding infrastructure to peripheral spaces, mostly inhabited by the poor due to urban segregation.

Some redistributive policy changes were more resilient, however, and survived under right‐wing administrations, while others were discontinued or severely reduced. The policies that became a permanent item on the agenda include, for example, public transportation innovations and slum upgrading, while discontinued policies include mainly those initiatives that impact land values, such as active planning, redistributive land use, and social housing for rent. These different trajectories are explained not only by the actors involved but also by the distinct policy processes that produced them.

However, before discussing the policies themselves, it is useful to begin with the distinction between easy and hard redistribution made by Holland and Schneider (2017). This concept sought to explain the limits of the “pink tide” in Latin America in the 2000s, distinguishing widely expanded non‐contributory social benefits (easy) from much rarer labor decommodification policies (hard). In urban contexts, it is reasonable to consider hard redistribution policies as those that influence land values (and thus the wealth of land and homeowners, as well as developers), create zero‐sum games with the wellbeing of elites and the rich, or actively interfere in the interests of private service providers. Easy redistribution involves policies that improve the quality of life of the poor and their access to services but without impacting the wealth of the rich. The case of São Paulo suggests that easy distribution policies may be implemented under any government (although they are usually also first developed under left‐wing administrations), while hard distribution only happens during left‐wing governments.⁸

With this distinction in mind, we can return to policy production processes. Once decisions are made, policies must be produced and delivered, which brings bureaucrats, private contractors and policy community actors to center‐stage. These actors interact with politicians within policy‐specific governance patterns (Le Galès 2011) and are involved in the production and operation of all policies, irrespective of producing easy or hard redistribution.

Concerning median voter mechanisms, once easy redistribution policies are in place, they tend to continue regardless of changes to who controls the executive.⁹ The production of hard redistributive policies, however, shows a different trajectory. These policies are interrupted or sharply reduced during right‐wing administrations, but they do not die completely, showing different degrees of resilience. Instead, they enter a kind of latency period and may be reanimated later, after the next government swing. This process is not entirely compatible with current agenda‐setting theories, which are produced by advocacy coalitions (Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith 1993) or by combinations of politics, problems and solution streams aligned by political leaders (Kingdom 1984). It is true that, as these theories predict, São Paulo's policies involved several political actors and groups strategically defending their interests and ideas, surrounded by institutions and historical legacies, as well as dealing with socially constructed problems and mobilizing existing solutions. However, traditional agenda theories suggest that policies that enter the agenda have “won” and tend to stay (like easy redistribution initiatives). In contrast, our cases show that many others (hard redistribution) follow a winding trajectory, shrinking or being discontinued, entering latency and being reanimated in the next friendly government.

These latencies and latter reanimations were made possible because the memory and organizational/operational capacities of these policies remained within the policy community, migrating inside and outside the State in the hands of bureaucrats, but also activists, academics and professionals who entered and left government. By policy communities, we mean the relational and issue‐based fields in which the actors of a policy sector interact (Marques 2003) beyond State and societal borders (Sellers 2010), not cohesive and unified actors amalgamated through collective action. In many cases, it is difficult to draw a hard line between State and society since actors circulate between many roles within these communities (Banaszak 2010; Abers 2019), reflecting the proximity between the urban reform movement and technicians in many municipalities. In the case of São Paulo, this has been the most critical influence/presence of civil society actors in policy production, participating in essential feedback mechanisms of policy change that connected State capacity building and policy production in non‐Weberian ways (Sellers 2010). The former process empowered actors central to the resilience of the latter, allowing policies to be reanimated from latency in subsequent governments.

However, these processes worked differently according to governance patterns, multiplying the variations between policy sectors. Several policy‐specific elements help to explain different rhythms and resiliences that reinforce or hamper latency. The presence of actors and finance from higher levels – both federal and international – create more resilience and make the return from latency easier, along with policy institutionalization (in laws, administrative procedures and organizational structures). Highly capacitated bureaucracies and conditions of institutional insulation also contribute to resilience. The effect of policy instruments works along the same lines, as micro‐institutions that operationalize policies and depoliticize implementation once in progress, regardless of their intrinsically political character, sustaining the policy's logic even in the absence of concrete actors (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007). One of the most critical elements to reinforce resilience and allow reanimation from latency, however, is the fit (Skocpol 1992) and embeddedness of policy actors in the bureaucracy and society, mainly in civil society organizations and academic circles. Finally, policies that hurt the interests of elite actors, as well as those of service providers, tend to be less resilient, as programs that produce hard redistribution. As we shall see in the following chapters, these processes operate differently by policy area, contributing to various degrees of resilience and different rhythms into and out of latency.

Although the chapters will develop a detailed account of policy changes, Table I.1 below summarizes the trajectories of the most relevant 30 urban redistributive programs.¹⁰ Each line represents a program within the studied policies, indicating their starting moments, latencies and reanimations through time, as well as the adopted intensities for their implementation (shown in grayscale). Columns represent governments, except for the last two, which classify the initiatives in terms of the types of redistribution (easy or hard) and trajectories (oscillated, came to stay or failed).

We can not only see that many redistributive programs were developed, but also that these became increasingly common as time passed. Among the policies, bus and waste collection services form the more significant proportions of recent changes, both areas consolidating changes that would remain in place for at least four administrations. Housing was the policy with the most significant number of innovations shifting back and forth from latency, while the same trajectory also characterizes traffic control and development regulation. Urban renewal presents increasing stability over recent years, associated with the learning process and the institutional consolidation of its main instrument. The subway, the only state‐level policy on the table, also presents changes, sometimes connected to municipal changes (and vice‐versa). Free passes, for example, were either produced by legislative initiatives (by the municipal council or the state legislature) or introduced following their establishment on municipal buses (and the other way around), as was the case of the integrated smart card. In any case, the main redistributive policy change in the subway was the construction of new lines to peripheries, which tended to be rare.

TABLE I.1 Trajectories of redistributive policy changes.

Although these patterns will undoubtedly become more evident throughout the chapters, the table provides a first glimpse of essential regularities. Some preliminary caution is necessary, however, to make the cell of the table more easily comparable. Although the table includes 30 programs, the comparison becomes more direct if we just consider municipal programs and disregard those that existed almost always (single bus fares and construction of new housing units) as well as the one that existed only in one government (the creation of a waste collection tax), reducing the universe to 24 programs. Since the municipal administration includes the same number of left‐wing, center‐right, and right‐wing municipal governments (three each), simple comparisons are already illustrative of the incidence of political ideology.¹¹ As predicted by partisan politics theories, most changes in municipal policies started and/or were reanimated in left‐wing administrations: 79% of the programs, while 15% of the programs started or restarted in centre‐right governments and just 7% of them in right‐wing governments, considering all intensities of implementation.¹²

However, when municipal programs were already underway, the difference between governments of different ideologies did not disappear but was sharply reduced. Among the 131 urban redistributive programs implemented by São Paulo's municipal governments since the return to democracy with any intensity, 67 (51%) occurred in left‐wing governments, compared to 38 (29%) in center‐right and 26 (20%) in right‐wing administrations. In this case, then, even though the left is still more prone to develop redistributive policies,¹³ the center‐right and the right have also done their part. These proportions change only slightly if we include the subway (governed all the time by the center‐right) or consider other intensities of implementation. Median voter mechanisms explain this since, given the composition of the São Paulo electorate, politicians from all ideologies try at least to avoid harming the interests of the poor and the lower middle classes. The effects of policy resilience reinforce this pattern, considering policy institutionalization and the participation of external actors.

On the other hand, the policy trajectories discussed in the following chapters suggest that during center‐right and right‐wing administrations, redistribution policies are usually sharply reduced or go into latency to be reanimated under the next left‐wing government. In fact, during the period, 35 municipal programs were interrupted or strongly reduced,¹⁴ 23 of them in right‐wing governments and 12 with the shift to center‐right administrations and none to left‐wing administrations. Among the interruptions, 21 impacted hard redistribution programs, while just 14 easy redistribution programs were affected. In both cases, right‐wing governments interrupted more programs, 13 hard and 10 easy redistribution ones.

There is also a strong association between easy redistribution and stable trajectories (13 of the 17 stable trajectories) and between hard redistribution and oscillating trajectories (11 of the 12 oscillating trajectories and the two failures).¹⁵ There is, therefore, an association between the kind of redistribution involved and policy resilience. Table I.2 at the end of this introduction provides essential documentation of these programs, but the chapters will discuss them in detail.

TABLE I.2 Selected information on redistributive programs/policies.

Policy	Program/Activity	Description	Source
Traffic control	Prioritize bus circulation	Covas implemented the first BRT corridor while Janio, Maluf and Pitta prioritized cars. Suplicy expanded networked BRT, but Serra and Kassab stopped building busways and opened lanes for cars. Haddad considerably expanded the bus‐transit network.	Chapter 5; Chapter 4; Almeida (2019)
Bike lanes and bikeways	Recreational weekend‐only bikeways were created by Kassab and Haddad implemented a lengthier network of permanent bike lanes.	Chapter 5; Lemos and Wicher Neto (2014); Chapter 4; Matatesta (2012)
Buses	single fare (not by distance)	Always present, since the 1970s.	Chapter 5; Vasconcelos (1999)
improve lines	Started with Covas (OSO), was resumed under Erundina and again with Suplicy (Interligado), to stay effective afterwards	Chapter 5; Chapter 4; Vasconcelos (1999)
control over lines	This involves bus planning, monitoring and control. It started weakly with Covas, was resumed under Erundina, very weak again with Maluf and Pitta, and very strong under Suplicy and afterwards	Chapter 5; Chapter 4; Vasconcelos (1999); Hirata (2011)
new dedicated lanes/corridors	Created in the Covas, Suplicy and Haddad (mainly)	Almeida (2019); Requena (2018); Vasconcelos (1999)
smart card (integration)	Created and implemented in the Suplicy government and maintained afterwards	Chapter 5; Chapter 4
creation of free passes	For elderly in 1983 (but became a constitutional right in 1988), 1990 for unemployed (Erundina), 1992 for handicapped (Erundina, but from a legislative iniciative) and 2014 for students (Haddad). In 2016 Doria reduce the latter to only low‐income students. Sometimes before buses, but also after them.	Chapter 6; 1998 Federal Constitution; Municipal Laws (10.854/90; 11250/92) and decrees (28.813/90; 29709/91), State laws (5869/87; 32.144/90; 666/91)
fare subsidies	Started with Erundina, were reduced under Maluf and Pitta, increased with Suplicy, maintained by Serra and Kassab and increased again under Haddad	Constanzo (2020); Chapter 5
Waste management	reduce service inequalities	Covas started and Erundina boosted. But it was the new concession format under Suplicy that established and latter maintained it.	Chapter 7; Godoy (2015)
control over trucks and services	Started with the new concession under Suplicy and latter maintained	Chapter 7; Silva (2010); Marin (2016); Godoy (2015)
control over trucks and services	Maluf started trucks telemetry and Pitta expanded, although with suspicions over confiability. The new concession format under Suplicy brought GPS control and better service monitoring at landfills.	Chapter 7; Santos and Gonçalves‐Dias (2012); Silva (2010); Marin (2016)
expand to slums	Started under Erundina, reduced under Maluf and Pitta and boosted under Suplicy, remaining in action afterwards	Chapter 7; Marques and Saraiva (2005)
recycling with pickers	Started timidly under Erundina, entered policy discussions under Suplicy but was never really structured as a strong program. In 2010, the National Solid Waste Policy created incentives and sanctions for waste pickers' inclusion, but still with timid and few concrete results.	Chapter 7; Santos and Gonçalves‐Dias (2012)
creation of a collection fare	Created with the new concession under Suplicy to finance the system, it was extinct by Serra. Since then, no mayor was capable of even bringing this subject up to discussion, although several Brazilian capitals have waste collection fares.	Chapter 7; Godoy (2015)
Housing	construction of new units	Traditional solution developed in all governments. Under Kassab and Haddad, production increased due to the federal program Minha Casa Minha Vida	Chapter 8; Marques and Rodrigues (2016)
better located projects	The Erundina government had this as a main preoccupation. This returned with less strength under Suplicy	Chapter 8; Bonduki (2000)
slum upgrading	Covas started, but in a disarticulated way. It became real in situ slum upgrading with Erundina and worked that way under Suplicy, Kassab and at the end of Haddad Maluf and Pitta developed a diminished and downgraded version of it.	Chapter 8; Bueno (2000); Denaldi (2003); Samora (2009); Akaishi et al. (2018)
settlement regularization	Erundina started, Pitta restarted and Suplicy continued it. Serra and Kassab strongly reduced, but at the end of Haddad it recovered speed.	Chapter 8; Mori (2000)
self‐help coproduction projects	Erundina created, Suplicy restarted, as well as Haddad at the end of the government	Chapter 8, Lopes (2011), Amaral (2002)
central city housing	Erundina started as a pilot, Suplicy retook it, as Haddad at the end of the government. With Serra and Kassab, the state agency did some of it.	Chapter 8; Menna Barreto (2000); Souza (2011)
social rent	Suplicy started and Haddad also developed it, but it never became a regular and stable program.	Chapter 8; Menna Barreto (2000)
Development regulation	better regulation/less corruption	Sectoral reform was discussed in the Suplicy government, but completely implemented under Haddad.	Chapter 9; Hoyler (2014); Nery (2002)
Urban renewalOI/UO	include social housing	Suplicy started the 10% rule and Haddad increased it to 25%. Maluf and Pitta built projects in IO but they are included under construction of new housing	Chapter 10; Bonduki (2010); Pagin (2017); Sarue (2015)
heterogeneous perimeters	Erundina (Centro), Suplicy (Água Espraiada) and Haddad (Água Branca) all did it. Maluf did it in a lower degree (Faria Lima)	Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Bonduki (2010); Castro (2016); Menegon (2008)
extract larger surpluses	Although always present, this was boasted with the development of the Cepacs in Suplicy government	Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Bonduki (2010); Pagin (2017); Sarue (2015)
more participation	Started under Suplicy (Água Espraiada) and it was boasted under Haddad (Água Branca)	Chapter 10; Castro (2016); Menegon (2008)
Subway	single fare (not by distance)	Always present, since the 1970s.	Chapter 6; Lagonegro (2004)
start builing new lines to peripheries	The first peripheral line (line 3) was built in the 1970s, before our period. In our period, just Line 5 ‐ Lilac. First phase in 1998 (Covas) and second in 2009 (Serra)	Costanzo (2017); Chapter 4; Chapter 6; Villaça and Zione (2005); Maia (1989)
smart card (integration)	Started under Alckmin, with Serra as mayor, when both the city and the state were governed by the same party.	Costanzo (2017); Chapter 6; De Paula (2014)
creation of free passes	Started in 1975 for students (50% discount). Then for elderly in 1985 (Montoro, but later became a constitutional right in 1988), then in 1990 for unemployed (Quercia), in 1992 for handicapped (Fleury) and in 2015 for low‐income students (Alckmin). Sometimes before buses, but also after them.	Chapter 6; 1998 Federal Constitution; Municipal Laws (10.854/90; 11250/92) e decrees (28.813/90; 29709/91), State laws (5869/87; 32.144/90; 666/91)