Cities against poverty: Brazilian experiences

Large cities in Latin America play an important and independent role in efforts to reduce povertyand social inequality. While monetary poverty can be reduced quite effectively through federal government programs such as cash transfer schemes, the improvement in poor people's housing conditions and living environment will have a greater impact on poverty and inequality in the long term. These measures are entirely dependent on municipal regulation, facilitation and coordination. Poor people?s political and social rights are main points of reference in this. Without democratic and well-functioning municipalities that can include citizens in active political participation between elections and hold the government accountable, people's legal rights will have less importance. Which lessons can be learnt from Brazil? After Brazil adopted a new democratic and federal constitution in 1988, the country has been recognized as having a very decentralized and participatory governance system. With 85 percent of the population living in urban areas, most of them in large cities, democratic city municipalities are supposed to play a key role in public policy making. However, our research shows that the public efforts to reduce poverty and inequality in Brazil have to a large extent been driven by the federal government. These programs, such as the conditional cash transfer program (Bolsa Familia) and the housing program (Minha Casa Minha Familia) have contributed to a change in the federal-municipal relations towards more dependence of the municipalities on the federal government, financially and administratively. Moreover, the new multi-level governance partnerships forming the basis for the social and urban development programs lack the type of transparency, accountability and participation by the civil society and the communities envisaged by the constitution and the City Law of 2001. Nevertheless, there is still a significant space for local and municipal agency, and this space is used in innovative ways to reduce urban poverty and inequality in cities with a well organized civil society and with strong participatory institutions embraced by the municipality.

Brazil is internationally known for its extraordinary inequality and for the poverty that affects the majority of the population. It is also recognized for its ability to innovate in terms of democratic-participatory governance. This coexistence of percei ved poverty and democratic governance is a paradox. On the one hand, for the last 15 years poverty and inequality have been decreasing in proportions unparalleled in the history of the country. On the other, this reduction does not seem to be directly rel ated to the experiences of democratic-participatory innovation. Facing this situation, the project will pursue the following question: what has been, and is, the role of the local governance level and the cities in the poverty policies? By distinguishin g between metropolitan regions and its municipalities, and between intra-city municipal and external intergovernmental dimensions, the project will be methodologically examined at to different stages: A) an extensive phase (first year of research) that de scribe the poverty trajectory at the metropolitan level in relation to the national tendencies ; B) an intensive phase (2nd and 3rd year of research) with in-depth case studies of four metropolitan regions.