Urban Reform, Participation and the Right to the City in Brazil

Leonardo AvritzerBelo Horizonte, Brazil

Web VersionSeptember, 2007

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/Part/proj/pnp.html

This paper was prepared for the project on Citizen Engagement and National Policy Change, coordinated by John Gaventa at the Institute of Development Studies and Gary Hawes, of the Ford Foundation. We are grateful to the Ford Foundation for its support. We anticipate that shorter versions of the papers will be forthcoming as a printed volume.

Other papers in the series include:

Cultural Adaptations: The Moroccan Women’s Campaign to Change the Moudawana

Is Knowledge Power? The Right to Information Campaign in India

Mexico Case Study: Civil Society and the Struggle to Reduce Maternal Mortality

Protecting the Child: Civil Society and the State in Chile

Reforming the Penal Code in Turkey: The Campaign for the Reform of the Turkish Penal Code from a Gender Perspective

The Extraordinary Ordinary: The Campaign for Comprehensive AIDS Treatment in South Africa

The National Campaign for Land Reform in the Philippines

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Urban Reform, Participation and the Right to the City in Brazil

Brazil passed through a deep process of urbanization throughout the twentieth century. In the beginning of the century, more than 70 per cent of its population inhabited the countryside and at the end of the same century more than 70 per cent of its population were urban dwellers. In this process, Brazilian cities grew in an unfair, disorganized and illegal way. The unfairness was the result of a process of modernization without any kind of planning that even when proposing planned cities, did not reserve spaces for the poor population, as had been the case of Belo Horizonte and Brasília (Brasil, 2004; Caldeira, 2000). In these planned cities, the poor population was ignored and had to occupy urban plots of land illegally. The disorganization was the result of an absurd process of land concession during the colonial and imperial periods that created a legal chaos in large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Holston, 1993). Illegality was the result of a civil code written in 1916, crafted for a rural society and which did not provide adequate legal instruments for urban policies as the country modernized (Fernandes, 2002). The result was a process of urbanization completely out of control at the peak of Brazil’s process of economic growth during the 1970s.

The late seventies and early eighties in Brazil, the last period of the authoritarian regime, involved the process of constitution of a democratic civil society. Brazilian civil society re-organized itself claiming many public goods and policies, among them the access to the property of urban land in large Brazilian cities (Gohn, 1992). The issues of access to property and property legalization are at the origin of the housing movement in the city of Sao Paulo. In other parts of Brazil, such as Porto Alegre, the issue of the legalization of state land occupied in the fifties would be even more pressing (Baierle, 1998). In both cases, as well as in the case of Belo Horizonte, the issue of the relationship between legal and illegal cities would come to the fore and would motivate the organization of hundreds of neighborhood associations in capitals of the South and Southeast of Brazil. The associative drive of the late seventies in Brazil was more selective in capitals of the Northeast. Recife was part of this drive whereas Salvador was not. I will show in this paper the consequences of the local context in the advancement of urban reform.

In this paper I will deal with the issue of the emergence of a national civil society movement in Brazil, the National Movement for Urban Reform (MNRU). This movement emerged during the National Constituent Assembly and it is still active in Brazil using its new designation of FNRU, the National Forum for Urban Reform. It is one of the few cases in democratic Brazil of a national civil society movement. The MNRU was active in the Constitution making process and later the FNRU was able to approve the required infra-constitutional legislation on urban reform called the Statute of the City. Comparing the situation of the urban poor in Brazil 20 years ago and its situation today it is possible to point out the following changes:

In 1984, the last year of authoritarianism in Brazil, 64 per cent of Brazilians had access to treated water and 30.9 per cent had access to sewage. In the wealthy southeastern region of Brazil the situation was better with 81.7 per cent of the population having

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access to treated water and 55 per cent to sewage. Today, the situation is much better due to actions of urban social movements and administrations by progressive politicians. According to the Brazilian Census Bureau (IBGE), in 2002, 82.3 per cent of the Brazilian had access to treated water (in the southeastern region, 91.4 per cent of the population) and 47.5 per cent of the population had access to sewage systems (76.4 per cent in the southeastern region). The urban reform movement gave legal instruments to local governments to implement these changes.

State capacity to curb speculation in large Brazilian cities was very low at the end of the authoritarian regime. At the same time, state capacity to legalize occupations made by the poor population was very low. Today, every large Brazilian city has a specific legislation allowing it to grant use rights of state soil to the poor. In the long-run this legislation will allow the reduction of the formation of new slums in Brazilian cities.

Last but not least, few Brazilian capitals, with the exception of Porto Alegre, had a plan for its medium term development. Today, all Brazilian cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants have such a plan called City Master Plans. All these changes cannot be underestimated. The poor population in Brazilian cities acquired access to public goods and increased its access to housing in the last 20 years. All these changes are linked to the movement for urban reform in Brazil and its actions at both the national and the local levels.

In spite of the deep changes unleashed by the urban reform movement, urban reform in Brazil was not a high mobilization case such as the movement for agrarian reform or for budget reform (Wright and Wolford, 2003). These movements brought about change in Brazil through road blockages, illegal invasion of lands and sharp mobilizations in the cities. In contrast with these movements, the urban reform movement is not a high mobilization movement. It used the influence of its most important partners to mobilize resources and influence at the political level, in particular at the National Congress. In the first part of this paper, I will show how informal movements at the public level constituted a movement for urban reform and which were the different organizational configurations assumed by the urban reform movement in Brazil from the early eighties to the year 2000. Secondly, I will show how legislation on urban reform emerged in Brazil during the Constitution-making process and after the Constituent Assembly as the need for infra-constitutional legislation became clear. I will show the legal and political dispute that took place in the Brazilian Congress for the approval of the Statute of the City. Last, but not least, I will show how the Statute of the City is being implemented in three different cities with different social movements trajectory: São Paulo, Salvador and Porto Alegre. Based on the different cases, I will propose a typology of the effectiveness of national civil society in local contexts. The overall claim of this paper is that civil society contributed in two capacities to the emergence of the new urban legislation in Brazil: firstly, in its capacity to gather popular actors and specialists creating an agenda for Brazilian political society; secondly, in its capacity to influence the Brazilian Congress in the long-run. Brazilian Congressmen do not stay for long in the house. The MNRU and the FNRU’s capacity to influence Congress from 1986 to 2002 is part of the success that led to the approval of the Statute of the City. I will also claim that civil

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society was helped by the success of the NMUR. The movement’s success helped urban reform to firmly establish itself in the hinterlands of Brazil and to help other local movements.

Social movements, constitution-making and legal change in Brazil

Urban reform was on the agenda of the Brazilian left and progressive sectors already at the end of the first democratic period in Brazil (1946-1964). In 1963, in Petropolis at the Quitandinha Hotel, a first national conference for urban reform took place. Urban reform would have to endure twenty years of authoritarianism, which emerged in 1964, before it would come back to the political agenda. The emergence of urban social movements was one of the novelties of the Brazilian democratization. In the first democratic period between 1946-1964, the associative pattern of the Brazilian urban poor was low. Very few neighborhood associations were created in the period (Avritzer, 2000; Boschi, 1987; Singer and Brandt, 1980) and the ones that were created were leisure associations. The only exception in the period was the city of Porto Alegre with the oldest tradition of neighborhood associations in Brazil (Baierle, 1998). Brazilian democratization changed this picture. Associative patterns greatly increased in the period between 1975-1985. In the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre there was a huge increase in the creation of associations during the democratization period. Recife, in the northeast, has also seen the creation of many new neighborhood associations (Silva, 2003). These organizations claimed access to urban land and social services. Yet, they were bound to the local level and were not articulated with a broader movement for political change. Salvador is the city which diverted the most in the process of creation of voluntary associations in Brazil. Though associative patterns in the city have increased since the late seventies, neighborhood associations in the city did not increase at an equal pace with the other cities in the south and southeast of Brazil. In addition, ethnic associations play an important role in Salvador’s civil society (Ireland, 1999) but they are very disconnected from social policy demands in the city. I will show in the last part of this paper the implementation of urban reform legislation based on these different patterns.

The National Movement for Urban Reform (MNRU) was formed in 1982 with the aim of elaborating a proposal for urban reform during the National Constituent Assembly. The MNRU was formed originally by popular movements, neighborhood associations, NGOs and Trade Unions (Brasil, 2004). The MNRU shows in its composition that it has been a hybrid between a social movement and an organized lobby from its very beginning. During the eighties, it had the mobilization characteristics of urban social movements in Brazil such as the mobilization of diffuse social actors and the capacity to aggregate a broad spectrum of social actors. Yet, since its formation, the MNRU counted on the support of national professional associations located in Brasília and was involved in national politics. The MNRU composition (see table 1 below) was atypical vis-à-vis Brazilian civil society in the period, due to the weight of national and professional associations in its composition, at a time in which civil society in Brazil was mainly local. Thus, in its composition there were a few local institutions, such as Famerj (the Federation of Neighborhood Associations in Rio de Janeiro) and the Movement in the

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Defense of Favelados. Professional associations such as FNA (National Federation of Architects) and the FNE (National Federation of Engineers) constituted the bulk of the influence of the movement. In addition to that, the MNRU anticipated the strong presence of NGOs in the Brazilian political scene from the 1980s onwards. In spite of the small number of influential NGOs in Brazil during the eighties, these NGOs were part of the urban reform movement. Yet, the MNRU has also had a lobbying dimension in which it did not hesitate to establish connections with political parties in order to have a presence in Brasilia. Some of the most well known leaderships within the movement, such as Rachel Rolnik, were part of the PT delegation to the National Constituent Assembly in the role of congressional consultant. The MNRU had excellent connections with left-wing MP’s in Brasilia. This created an active, lobby-like movement, even when Brazilian civil society associations lacked the resources for it.

Table 1. MNRU (National Movement for Urban Reform)

Popular movements MDF – Movimento de Defesa dos Favelados

Neighborhood associations FAMERJ NGOs FASE, POLISTrade unions Sindicatos Federação Nacional dos

Engenheiros; Federação Nacional dos Arquitetos

Professional associations ANSUR – Articulação Nacional do Solo Urbano

Source: (Brasil, 2004)

The Brazilian National Constituent Assembly was a congressional assembly that accepted popular amendments. 1985 and 1986 were years of strong mobilization in Brazil. Two different issues were disputed between civil society and state actors during that phase of the process of democratization; the first issue was whether the Constituent Assembly should be congressional or an exclusive assembly, and the second question was on how social actors would influence the constitution-making process. In the political debate on the second question, Brazilian strong civil society actors – OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) and CNBB (National Conference of Bishops) – were successful in their proposal that the Constituent would accept popular amendments. Millions of people subscribed to popular amendment proposals between 1985 and 1986, the most likely number being around 12 million subscriptions (Whitaker, 2003). In this process, the MNRU proposed an amendment for urban reform based on the following principles:

..the idea of the right to the city. The right to the city had different dimensions. Its key meaning was a decent living for the urban poor in Brazil (Saule, 1995:23). It also has had the dimension of the unification of urban struggles in Brazil through the integration of health, transportation, sanitation and education demands. In the words of a social actor of the period, “…urban reform will make viable the

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unification..of the movements for transportation, health, housing and land allowing them to elaborate a unified platform to re-energize the city..”

(Teixeira Ferreira, 1988).

A second important point was the subordination of private property to the aims of urban policy. Brazilian cities, up to 1988, lacked the fiscal instruments to organize real estate interests and actions in large cities. The popular amendment on urban reform envisioned the following instruments: progressive taxation on urban property; taxation on the valorization of urban property; state preference in the acquisition of urban land; state prerogative to expropriate urban land. In the words of an important social actor of the period, urban reform “..politicized the debate on planning by bringing to the center of the debate the issue of the social function of property..” (Rolnik, 1997).

The popular amendment on urban reform brought a third issue to the Constituent agenda: the democratic governance of Brazilian cities. The popular amendment envisioned several devices for the exercise of democratic governance, among them, public audiences, popular initiative, popular veto of legislation with five per cent of electorate support and last but not least the possibility of the Ministério Público1 to act in case of legal vacuum.

The popular amendment on urban reform was presented with 131,000 subscriptions and unleashed a lobby battle with conservative real state interests. The thematic committee on ‘Urban Issues and Transportation’ did not initially attract too many powerful Constituents due to the fact that conservative sectors had more pressing short-term issues, such as the duration of Sarney’s mandate or the renewal of television concessions or the blocking of agrarian reform. In this sense, conservative lobbies were not very active in nominating representatives to the thematic area of urban reform.

The Constituent Assembly procedures in regard to urban reform were the following. The popular amendment on urban reform was referred to the Thematic Commission on Urban Issues and Transportation. The committee ran a public audience on the proposal of popular amendment that was defended by the architect Ermínia Maricato.2 The thematic sub-committee decided for the creation of a chapter on urban reform with the following devices: progressive taxation, expropriation of urban land with the use of public titles and state capacity to create urban soil (Antonucci, 1999:18). From the thematic committee, the issue of urban reform went to the so called ‘systematization committee’ in which the pressure of conservative interests were stronger. Conservative interests in Brazil made the charge that the systematization committee has been taken by left-wing interests and in order to oppose that, they constituted a group called

1 Ministerio Público is a legal figure existent in Brazilian law and whose role was completely changed by the 1988 Constitution. Before 1988, the role of the Ministério Público was to defend the interest of the Federal government and the Union. In 1985, the Ministério Público acquired other prerogatives, the most important among them being the defense of diffuse interests. The 1988 Constitution consolidated this institutional function through the differentiation of two institutions, the Advocacia Geral da União and the Ministério Público.2 Ermínia Maricato became a well known urban reformer in democratic Brazil. She occupied the position of housing secretary in the Luisa Erundina administration of the PT. in São Paulo. She was the deputy Minister of the City between 2003-2005.

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Centrão. Centrão was in charge of making amendments to the text that would transform it into a conservative charter. Real estate interests pursued inside the Constituent Assembly the strategy of transferring the final decision on urban issues to another arena outside the constitution making process in order to avoid the automatic application of a new legislation (Saule, 1995:28). Most of the proposals of the sub-committee on urban issues were kept intact but were integrated with the requirement for the cities to have a ‘master plan’3 proposed by Centrão. Thus, paragraph one of article 182 of the 1988 Constitution requires a ‘city master plan approved by City Hall as mandatory to all cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants’ (Brasil, 1988). All urban reform proposals were made dependent upon the fulfillment of this clause.

Thus, the MNRU was partially successful in making its proposal for urban reform part of the Constitutional text due to the following motives: firstly, its organizational structure with the heavy representation of professional associations. In spite of its capacity for mobilization expressed in the number of subscriptions to its popular amendment, the differential of the urban reform movement was the legitimacy as well as the resources of the associations behind the proposal. A second important reason for the success of the MNRU was its concentration on a single issue and the intensity of its actions in favor of its agenda. Many other movements made proposals for the Constituent Assembly but only the MNRU and the health movement concentrated on one single issue. The MNRU crossed political borders acquiring support from different parties and movements to its urban reform proposal. Thirdly, conservative sectors were not as organized during the Constituent Assembly since most of the issues dealt by urban reform were long-term issues that conservative sectors in Brazil were not highly concerned with.4 The MNRU was able to incorporate the democratic management of urban policy and the social function of property into the chart as broad principles but they both became subordinated to the requirement of the elaboration of a city master plan. The consequence of subordination of the urban reform agenda to the elaboration of city master plans was the requirement of what the Brazilian legal tradition calls a statute or an infra-constitutional5 process of specification of the Constitutional Law. A 14 year battle followed the approval of the Constitutional text. Throughout this battle, the institutional format and composition of civil society organization in charge of the struggle for urban reform changes. The MNRU (National Movement for Urban Reform) became the National Forum for Urban Reform (FNRU). The substitution of the MNRU by the FNRU involved an organizational debate on the characteristics civil society should have

3 City master plans or planos diretores are not per se conservative devices. Some Brazilian cities such as Porto Alegre have had city master plans since the late seventies. The novelty introduced by the Constituent Assembly was the link between having a city master plan and being able to introduce the other devices approved by the Constitution in its urban chapter.4 The main issue voted in the National Constituent Assembly was agrarian reform in spite of the smaller economic interest involved in the issue. Agrarian sectors have always had a stronger presence in Congress than the expression of the economic sector they represented had in the Brazilian economy as a whole. In agrarian reform the left was defeated by Centrão on the issue of the social function of property. This reduced the ability of conservative sectors to struggle for other issues. 5 Brazilian Law does not allow for administrative interpretation of the Constitution as it is the case in Anglo-Saxon countries. The 1988 Constitution required specific legislation in many areas. This legislation is called ‘infra-constitutional’ legislation. It exists in the areas of health, social assistance and urban reform among others.

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in order to assume a legislative battle in the national Congress. The composition of the FNRU was the following:

Table 2.The Composition of the FNRU

Popular Movements

CMP Central dos Movimentos Populares

NGOs Polis, Fase, ANSUR, INESCProfessional Associations

FISENGE Federation of Engineers, FENAE Federation of Economiários, FNA Federation of Arquitects

Source: Almeida Silva, 2002

It is possible to point out the characteristics of civil society format capable of acting at the national level. The MNRU expressed characteristics of other civil society movements in the democratization moment such as the presence of trade unions, NGOs and professional associations. However, the presence of national associations within the MNRU already pointed in the direction of a national design. The same can be said about the NGOs that joined the MNRU. In spite of the local civil society traditions that generated NGOs such as Polis, firmly grounded in São Paulo’s civil society, or Fase, firmly grounded in Rio de Janeiro’s civil society, it is possible to argue that in the eighties they still assumed the role of coordinating other NGO activities. In this sense, it is possible to differentiate the MNRU’s NGOs from other civil society institutions of the 1980s according to their interest in national issues. Another issue that has to be taken into account is the strong presence of national professional associations such as FNE and FNA in the FNRU. In spite of the strong capacity for mobilization of Brazilian civil society during the 1980s, its financial capacity was reduced. At that point, FNE and FNA brought to civil society the financial capacity to make an effective lobby at the Constituent Assembly. A final element was also important in the success of the MNRU: the personal connection of some of its leadership with political parties that brought them to Congress (Rolnik, 2006). The weight of the MNRU leadership was increased through the boost they received from the PT. or the PC do B (Partido Communista do Brasil- Brazilian Communist Party) .Thus, the MNRU diverged from most civil society associations and reform movements in the 1980s. It already had in its midst the seeds of a national movement whereas other movements that would become national were still adopting a local mobilization logic. All these elements would become even more important as the necessity of a long battle for the approval of an infra-constitutional legislation would become clear to the FNRU social actors.

National civil society, lobbying and the emergence of urban law: between the local and the national

The struggle between civil society and conservative sectors on the content of urban law involved intense lobbying in Brazilian Congress for almost 13 years. Throughout this period 16 different projects of infra-constitutional legislation emerged (Grazia, 2002) and the project that became known as ‘Statute of the City’ was approved. Throughout these

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13 years, the first popular governments were elected in São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte and the FNRU dedicated itself both to national law and to urban reform at the local level (Rolnik, 2006). The 13 years of political struggle would in the end be centered around Law Project number 181 of 1989 proposed by Senator Pompeu de Sousa and approved by the Brazilian Congress in 2001. Pompeu de Sousa was a well-known newsman from Rio de Janeiro who moved to Brasília in the seventies, where he became linked to Editora Abril, the largest magazine publisher in Brazil. He was also close to the founders of the University of Brasília that was an important project of the Brazilian left during the sixties. Pompeu de Sousa law project (PLS 181 of 1990) incorporated the following elements of the MNRU and the FNRU proposals:

- the collective right of urban dwellers to the city (article six)- the coordination by the state of the process of occupation of urban land (article

five) though in a lighter form than the FNRU wished- the social function of private property (article seven), though in a lighter form than

the FNRU wished- progressive taxation of urban property (article 16) though in a lighter form than

the FNRU wished- the requirement of elaboration of a city master plan for cities with more than

20,000 inhabitants (article 38).

Yet, the Pompeu de Sousa law project also lagged behind a few central issues that had been posed by the FNRU, in particular the democratic administration of urban policies. The MNRU in its constitutional project envisioned several instruments for the democratic administration of urban law, among them: the popular initiative of law, the veto of changes in urban law when more than five per cent of the population expresses opposition to new urban rules, and the right to information and control (Silva, 1990). The Pompeu de Sousa project introduced a new formulation for democratic participation that was far more restrictive to participation: ‘urban politics would be guided by the following principles: democratic administration (gestão) and incentives to popular participation in the formulation and implementation of urban development projects’ (article ten). Thus, it is possible to see where the contentious issues regarding urban politics lay in the Pompeu de Sousa project: regarding a conservative agenda, conservative sectors were not happy that part of the agenda of the Constituent Assembly came back through the Pompeu de Sousa project. Local administration prerogatives such as progressive taxation, social function of urban property and preemption prerogatives were the targets of conservative sectors. On the other hand, progressive civil society sectors (FNRU) were not happy with some of the formulations of the Pompeu de Sousa project, in particular with the dilution of the democratic forms of city administration. Initially civil society and the PT and the PC do B envisioned the strategy of proposing another law project, the Lourdinha Savignon (PT-ES) project. The main elements of the Lourdinha Savignon project were: the creation of urban soil, the restoration of democratic participation in urban politics and the concession of the use of illegally occupied public lands (Arruda). Up to 1998, FNRU, the PT and other left-wing sectors supported one law project and conservative sectors supported another law project.

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In between 1992 and 1997 the dynamics of the FNRU moved from the national to the local level and this change had two major consequences: first of all, the Pompeu de Sousa Law Project remained dormant in the Brazilian Congress until 1997 when it was approved in the first sub-committee in charge of urban legislation, the CEIC (Committee on Economy, Industry and Commerce). The first committee of the Brazilian Congress to appreciate the Statute of the City issued a very conservative report. The committee for economic development in its report denied the legality of elements of the FNRU and civil society agenda: the right to the city and the concept of urban law. It also chose to keep the urban instruments involved in urban law to a minimum. In this sense, the first moment of elaboration of legislation in the National Congress involved a defeat of the FNRU through two different strategies: firstly, the indefinite postponement of the law in particular in the economic affairs committee was a conservative strategy (Saule, 1995). Secondly, FNRU personnel entered municipal governments in São Paulo in 1989, in Santo Andre in 1989, in Porto Alegre in 1989 and in Belo Horizonte in 1993. These experiences led to a broad re-elaboration of the aim of the FNRU. According to Rolnik, ’local experimentation..and the debates on Sao Paulo’s organic law were key to the establishment of the agenda that led to the statute of the city’ (Rolnik, 2006). Thus, it is possible to point out that the agenda of urban reform in Brazil, from the end of the constituent assembly and the elaboration of the Pompeu de Sousa Law project in the late 1980s moved from the national to the local level and with this move has had problems making itself effective at the local level. The FNRU moved to the national level again after the elections of 1996. Back to the Congress, it gave a legal response to the very negative form of institutionalization that emerged from the Economic Development Committee of the National Congress. The response was to submit the Statute of the City to the Committee on Consumers and Environmental Affairs that was controlled by left-wing members of Congress. Table 3 below shows the itinerary of the Statute of the City in the National Congress from 1989 to 2001.

Table 3. Itinerary of the Statute of the City in the Brazilian Congress

Appreciation of the State of the City in the Lower ChamberCommittee for economic development Period the law project stayed in the

committee: 1992-1997Committee for the defense of the consumer and the environment

Period the law project stayed in the committee: 1994-1998

Committee on Justice and Constitutionality

February-November 2000

Approval by the Board of the Congress (mesa diretora do Congresso)

13th December 2000

Approval by Plenary of the Congress 6th February 2001Committee on Justice and Constitutionality. Final appreciation

22nd March 2001

Appreciation in the Senate 18th June 2001

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Publication in the National DiaryDiário Oficial

19th June 2001

Sanction by President Cardoso with vetoes

22nd June 2001

Issuing of an MP (provisional decree). The MP granted the legality of occupation of public lands up to 250 square meters

4th September 2001

Many of the breakthroughs that allowed civil society forces (FNRU) to incorporate their agendas in the Pompeu de Souza project took place during this period, a period of intense negotiations within Congress. Yet, the infrastructure of the FNRU in Brasilia had never been professionalized. The FNRU drew on PT cabinet members in states of the northeast of Brazil (Ceará and Piaui) who helped to organize its agenda during the late 1990s. As the legislation for urban reform arrived at the Committee on Consumers and Environmental affairs, Arruda, the committee president, opened his cabinet for urban reform personnel. It was through these actions that the following elements of the FNRU proposal were re-incorporated into the law:

- the right to the city as a conception for the elaboration of urban law that was proposed by the FNRU and rejected in the Economic Development Committee;

- local administration pre-emption prerogatives (the capacity of the administration to hold land in areas in which it anticipates the expansion of the city).

Thus, it is possible to see how the legal battle between the FNRU and conservative real estate interests took place: the Pompeu de Sousa project that became a reference in the elaboration of the infra-constitutional legislation on urban reform did not fully consider the FNRU agenda. It was taken over by the urban reform people due to the political opportunity, that is to say, it became the stronger law project in Congress and the opportunity to approve legislation lay there. Two problems were faced by the FNRU. The first and most important was that the law could stay dormant in the Brazilian Congress forever, and this happened during the 1994-1997 legislature (Saule, 2005). The other battlefield was constituted by committees of the national congress in charge of subsidizing the voting process. Civil society actors and the FNRU proposed themselves a law presented by the PT congresswoman, Lourdinha Savignon. Other PT members proposed other legal initiatives, as was the case of Nilmário Miranda. Conservative congressmen also proposed their own law projects, as was the case of Ricardo Izar and Antônio Brito. In each of the committees, the struggle was what to include and what to exclude in the parallel projects. In the Economic Development Committee most of the civil society agenda was rejected. In the Consumers and Environment Committee the civil society agenda was re-inserted into the law project in a more coherent fashion. The contentious elements along the way were: the framing of the legislation in terms of rights; the introduction of progressive taxation of urban property; pre-emption prerogatives of the state for holding urban land; and the mandatory nature of the city master plan.

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After the reinsertion of the FNRU agenda into the Pompeu de Sousa project, the next step of the legal battle would be its report at the Justice and Constitutionality Committee, the most important committee of the Brazilian Congress. The final report on the law issued in 2000 positioned itself on three main items: how to make the city master plan mandatory; whether the occupation of public lands could be made legal; and whether the federal government could make participation at the local level mandatory. In a public audience, the FNRU defended the maintenance of all the instruments for the concession of special housing rights, as well as the principle of the social function of private property. In the end, the report by MP Inaldo Leitão (PSDB - Paraíba) was for the constitutionality of all the instruments making the city master plan mandatory, allowing progressive taxation and giving to local governments pre-emption prerogatives. In this sense, we can consider the actions of the FNRU highly successful. A final issue that took place was the re-insertion of the items of democratic participation in the final draft of the law. Two PT MPs asked the law reporter to listen to representatives of the FNRU on the issue, after which a new amendment to the law was approved. The amendment forecast public audiences in the elaboration of city master plans and forecast its nullification in case public audiences were lacking (Arruda, 2001). Public audiences, as will be shown in the next session of this paper, played a key role in the negotiations for the approval of the city master plan of São Paulo and for the nullification of the city master plan of Salvador.

For the final approval of the law it was necessary for it to return to the Senate and be sanctioned by the President. The FNRU also lobbied at this level. Two explanations are available for the last actions for the approval of the Statute of the City. Regina Mayers, a professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of São Paulo and a personal friend of the Cardosos, played a role in this process that still has to be fully reported. Informal talks point in the direction of her personal influence with Cardoso being key to the approval of the Statute of the City.6 Activists involved with the whole process claim that lack of conflict in the last part of the approval process was motivated by the broad front formed by the FNRU that was able to gather the PT, the PSDB and a large part of the PMDB for the approval of the Statute of the City, which took place in December, 2001. In addition to that, it cannot be denied that the political force of the urban reform movement in Brazil changed during this whole period. The PT governed a handful of cities in 1988, none of them important during the crafting of the Constitution. The PT won important cities in the election that took place a few weeks after the enactment of the new Constitution. In 2002, the PT administered 187 cities; several among them had implemented urban reform proposals. The federal bench of the PT and left parties also grew very much in this period. In 1988, the PT had 16 MP’s and in 2001, 60 MPs (Hunter, 2006).

Overall, the success of the FNRU can be attributed to three issues: firstly, the strong presence of professional associations who had diffused influence in the Brazilian Congress. These associations had the capacity to mobilize the press, to influence

6 Regina Meyers declined to be interviewed when she realized that the subject of the interview would be her role in the approval of the Statute of the City. The two other actors interviewed, Nelson Saule and Rachel Rolnik, had different positions on the issue. Saule denied any role played by Meyers, whereas Rolnik accepted a limited role.

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members of important parties and to have special access to important members of the executive branch. Secondly, the FNRU long-standing presence in Congress has also been very important. Most of the local movements in Brazil act episodically in Congress and do not understand very well the structure of political opportunities present within the political system. The FNRU, in spite of its long-standing partnership with left-wing forces - the PT and the PC do B supported the struggle for urban reform - also had the capacity to reach center forces. Thirdly, its capacity to focus on a specific agenda in the long-run, whereas conservative sectors shifted their agenda many times during the same period.

The implementation of the Statute of the City: an analysis of three cases

The role of civil society associations in the elaboration of urban reform in Brazil has to be separated in two parts: firstly, the role of civil society, through the FNRU, was the struggle for the emergence of national legislation on urban reform. In this regard, the FNRU actions are truly unique in terms of Brazilian civil society activities. No other national legislation7 required so much effort at the national level in terms of mobilization and lobbying capacity. Yet, there is a second dimension of civil society action that needs to be taken into account in order to understand the effectiveness of the policy: the implementation of city master plans required by the Statute of the City in different cities. In this paper, I will follow this process in three cities: São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Salvador. I will show that the different characteristics of civil society actions as well as the different political contexts in each one of the cities generated different results.

The Brazilian democratization produced a marked increase in the propensity to create voluntary and independent forms of association. Table 4 below shows the increase in the number of voluntary associations created in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte during Brazil’s long transition to democracy (1974-1985):

Table 4. Number of associations created in large Brazilian cities8

Number of Voluntary Associations per Decade

1941-1950

1951-1960

1961-1970

1971-1980

1981-1990

CitySão Paulo 288 464 996 1871 2553Belo Horizonte 120 204 459 584 1597Porto Alegre ----- ----- ----- ---- 671

7 The other national legislation on participation that was highly contentious was the legislation on health. There was a battle in 1990 on the participatory format of health policies as the LOS, Lei Orgânica da Saúde, was being discussed. Collor vetoes the articles on participation of the LOS triggering a mobilization against the federal government. However, the final format of the LOS with a new law allowing participation emerged in the same year. Thus, in terms of length and mobilization capacity the case of urban reform is more impressive. 8 It is worth pointing out that growth was meaningful if compared to the population increase in the three cities in the same period. São Paulo’s population increased 43 per cent between 1970 and 1980 and 13.5 per cent between 1980 and 1990. Yet, the number of associations in the city doubled in this period. The differential between the growth of associations and population growth throughout the period was 36.45 per cent. Data for Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte show more compelling data.

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Source: Santos (1993), Avritzer (2000), Baiocchi (2005)

It is worth calling attention to several aspects of this phenomenon: the total number of associations doubled in São Paulo in the 1970s and tripled in Belo Horizonte in the 1980s (Avritzer, 2000). Thus, it is possible in the case of the large Brazilian cities to speak of a very impressive change in the pattern of association, a process which involved an increasing propensity to associate, a greater number of associations, new associations for claiming material benefits such as community improvement, and the emergence of associations dealing with post-material claims. Though there is not data for Porto Alegre for the whole period, the available data also shows a huge increase in the affiliation to associations.

However, the fact that the Brazilian cities experienced a boom in associative patterns during the late seventies and early eighties does not exhaust the history of civil society associations in each one of them. Different trajectories as well as different relations with political society are relevant for the understanding of the local contexts for the actions of civil society associations. In the case of the city of São Paulo, the way the associated population evolved during the democratic period is at least very intriguing. São Paulo has a huge tendency for informal and religious participation (Avritzer, 2004). It also has had a tendency of both increasing and decreasing participation of associations dedicated to public policies. The reason for this variation is that no other city in democratic Brazil has experienced so much change in political administration. Administrative continuity took place only once in the democratic period (1985-2005) and, in addition to that, the competition between the PT and the malufismo9 made the city switch between left-wing and right-wing mayors during the nineties. Thus, two characteristics of São Paulo are unique and express themselves in the city master plans: civil society strength and the dispute between left and right. Civil society strength expresses itself in the presence of strong NGOs and thematic movements in the city. The presence of POLIS and important urban reform leaderships in the city is remarkable. Yet, alone they cannot compensate for the also very strong articulation of conservative interests in the city. It is precisely this dispute that marks the implementation of São Paulo’s master plan.

In 1988, the PT won elections in the city of São Paulo for the first time. These were highly contentious elections and the mayor Luiza Erundina never managed to have a stable majority at City Council. She made a progressive proposal for the city Organic Law that was never approved in City Council (Macaulay, 1996). The period between 1992 and 2000 were years of de-mobilization of civil society actors. Participation in traditional areas in the city, such as health, decreased as did participation in housing and other popular activities. In the year 2000 the PT came back to power through Marta Suplicy. Marta Suplicy’s administration proposed the implementation of a new city master plan according to the recently approved Statute of the City.

9 Paulo Maluf is the strongest conservative politician in the city of São Paulo. Maluf was mayor in the seventies and governor of the state of São Paulo between 1979 and 1983. He was the last candidate in the indirect elections for president instituted by the Brazilian authoritarian regime. After being defeated for governor and president several times, Maluf made a come back and was elected mayor of São Paulo in 1992.

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The case of Porto Alegre is different from São Paulo’s case because it involved more continuity in the relationship between left sectors, civil society associations and the city administration. In the case of Porto Alegre, the existing tradition of associations which existed since the 1950s evolved in the eighties to a new umbrella association, UAMPA (União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre), which claimed for the first time the right to participate in the deliberation on budget issues at the local level in 1986 (Uampa, 1986; Avritzer, 2002a). Thus, there is in the case of Porto Alegre a tradition of community mobilization that differentiated it from other Brazilian cities, from the fifties through the eighties. Porto Alegre also had a tradition of more left-wing political behavior. This tradition can also be traced back to the post-war period. Between 1947 and 1963, the PTB (Brazilian Labor Party) was the party which received the largest share of the votes in the elections for City Council (Silva, 2001). At the moment in which re-democratization took place in Brazil (1985-1988), there was a dispute between left-wing and right-wing candidates in most Brazilian capitals with the exception of Porto Alegre in which the political dispute was between the P.D.T. and the PT or between sectors of the left. After the victory of Olívio Dutra in the 1988 elections, the PT, hegemonized the left sectors in the city and governed it for 16 years. In this regard, Porto Alegre is different from São Paulo because there has been administrative continuity in Porto Alegre by a left party, the PT, which sought the long-term collaboration of civil society actors.

Salvador is an interesting third case to bring into comparison. Salvador has had a much less active civil society since Brazil’s democratization (Boschi, 1999). Neighborhood associations in the city are not very active and the existing ethnic associations in the city do not play a strong political role (Ireland, 1999). Salvador’s political society has been dominated by the PFL (Partido da Frente Liberal), the most stable conservative party in democratic Brazil. In addition to the PFL hegemony, Salvador is controlled by a family oligarchy, the Magalhaes. Antonio Carlos Magalhaes (ACM) was the state governor during the authoritarian period, the first communication Minister of the democratic period and has been governor of Bahia during the democratic period. His son, Luis Eduardo Magalhaes, was the speaker of the National Congress during the beginning of the Cardoso Administration. The left administered Salvador for a brief period between 1993-1996 in which the Magalhaes blocked any major political initiative by the mayor (Boschi, 1999). Thus, Salvador is a case in which civil society has been historically weak and political society has been dominated by conservative sectors.

Thus, we can see three different local traditions of civil and political society organization and interaction. São Paulo had a tradition of strong civil society organization at the beginning of the democratization period. However, this tradition was affected by the lack of continuity in civil and political society collaboration affecting the number of associations involved in the participation in public policy (Avritzer, 2004). Conservative sectors in the city shared with the PT the political administration leading to a circuit of continuity and discontinuity in civil and political society collaboration. Porto Alegre can be differentiated from São Paulo due to the strength of its associative sector and because of the unique relation between civil associations and its political society. Administrative continuity favored a long-term positive collaboration. Salvador is a third

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case both in respect to the size of its associative sector as well as in its relationship with the political system. Salvador’s civil society is weak, it did not follow the new associative pattern of the democratic period and its political society has been constituted mainly by the PFL which governed the state and the city for 16 years (they lost the city in 2004) and is radically anti-participatory in the city. Thus, we have three different patterns and our aim is to show how the implementation of the city master plan, a national law requirement, varied in these different contexts.

The process of elaboration and approval of São Paulo’s master plan expresses the discontinuities in civil society and political society organization in the city. The São Paulo master plan was elaborated in the first year of Marta Suplicy’s administration and was sent by the mayor to City Council in May, 2002. Its drafter was a historical member of the urban reform movement, Nabil Bonduki. Bonduki is a professor of urban planning at the University of São Paulo. He was president of the Professional Association of Architects of the city between 1986 and 1989, the time at which the legislation on participation was proposed at the national level. Bonkuki participated in the first PT administration in São Paulo as part of the staff of the Planning Secretary and was elected a City Councilor in the year 2000. Bonduki’s presence as the reporter of the new law showed the strength of civil society actors in the city. However, his actions and the strong conservative lobby would put him in conflict with the mayor and other city hall councilors during the process.

São Paulo’s master plan was approved in two parts. The first part involved the establishments of parameters for the city development. The second part involved specific regional plans. The first part involved the establishment of seven main guidelines: the first one was the occupation of intermediate regions in the process of urban development of the city. City regions would be declared of public interest according to the Statute of the City if their owners would not give them an immediate purpose; second, six new areas in the periphery of the city were chosen and in these areas occupied public property would be assigned to the poor population using the so- called outorga onerosa (property concession with onus), an instrument created by the Statute of the City to legalize public property occupied by poor people; the third element of the plan was giving incentives to collective transportation in order to reduce the use of cars in the city; the fourth element of the plan was giving incentives to the re-occupation of areas in the downtown part of the city in order to halt the occupation of green lands; the fifth element of the plan was to restore permeability to São Paulo’s soil; the sixth was the preservation of residential areas through the broadening of exclusively residential areas, and the seventh, the creation of zones of cultural preservation (Folha de São Paulo, 29th September, 2002).

For the approval of the first part the existing requirements for participation were fulfilled: 26 public audiences were conducted in addition to 15 specific meetings with NGOs and technical personnel. More than 230 organizations participated in the process in August 2002. The most contentious element in the process of approval of the first part of the city master plan involved the delimitation of neighborhoods and licensing of construction in these neighborhoods. Regarding the licensing of construction and the definition of

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neighborhoods this is an area of high relevance for real estate interests. Huge amounts of money are made in Brazilian cities through changes in the amount of soil that may be created by construction. The Regional master plan had to be consolidated at City Hall and for its approval the administration needed 33 votes. City council representatives made amendments to the plan that considered the specific interests of real estate dealers.The government accepted their amendments and with their votes approved the plan. Yet, civil society actors considered the process tainted (Estado de São Paulo, 23 rd August 2002).

The second stage of the implementation of São Paulo’s master plan involved the elaboration of regional master plans and was highly contentious. Two major conflicts involved the elaboration of the São Paulo regional master plan, the conflict on the access to information and the conflict on the status of civil society representatives. The city administration published the relevant information on regional changes in the City Diary and called for 31 public audiences from the regions in early November 2003. Public audiences gathered three different types of actors: members of neighborhood associations that did not want their neighborhoods to change; real estate speculator representatives that had limited voice in the meeting and urban professionals. Real estate interests had two main complaints that ended up in litigation: their first complaint was incomplete information that, in their case, was important because they could not know exactly whether the law was affecting their properties. The public prosecutor of São Paulo sued the city based upon this allegation with the claim that ‘the maps and the attachments [to the law] are incomplete and without that information citizens cannot fully participate in the public audiences’ (Folha de São Paulo, 13 th November 2003).The courts accepted the argument and the city was required to make public all the maps involving changes in construction licensing. The second complaint of real estate interests was on their inability to defend their interests: real estate interests claimed that their representatives were blocked from the assemblies. In fact what took place is that the city allowed only individual participation by civil society association members. Real state speculators did not want to go to the meeting themselves, they wanted association lawyers to participate and defend their interests. Neighborhood association members participated normally in the 31 assemblies. Again, the São Paulo public prosecutor was asked to make all 31 assemblies null. The courts accepted the claim saying that ‘the exclusion of civil associations’ hurt the Constitution. For the judge Simone Cassoretti ‘individual participation is not enough to fulfil the constitutional claim of democratic administration of the city. It should be granted to representative associations the right to participate’ (Folha de São Paulo, 20th December 2003). Regional master plans were approved in July 2004 after the public audiences were held again.

São Paulo’s case of the elaboration of city and regional master plans is very instructive for one main reason: it shows that the interests involved in urban speculation are very strong in the city and that they need to be offset by political forces. In the case of the city of São Paulo these forces were organized civil society, in particular strong NGOs like POLIS and neighborhood associations in cases of neighbourhoods facing the danger of de-characterization. Even in this case, real estate interests organized themselves and could make null several provisions of the city master plan.

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São Paulo’s case is very instructive in analyzing the relationship between national civil society and local changes. The first conclusion of the elaboration of São Paulo’s city master plan is that due to the level of contention in the city between conservative and left sectors, the city master plan required a previous approval of a national law, otherwise it would have been blocked either by the Courts or City Council. However, even in the case of an existing national law, real estate interests could organize themselves and block important provisions in the Courts. Thus, São Paulo is a case in which both civil society and real estate interests are strong and the law allows a draw between these forces with the partial contemplation of real estate interests when City Council and the legal system join the process.

The cases of Porto Alegre and Salvador are very different from São Paulo. In the case of Porto Alegre, the city had institutional participation for a longer period, as well as a long period of partnership between state and civil society actors (Baierle,1998; Avritzer, 2002b). The case of Porto Alegre contrasts with the case of São Paulo in almost every respect. Porto Alegre is the Brazilian capital with the oldest tradition of city planning. Porto Alegre in 1935 made an attempt to organize its urban expansion that was unique in Brazil. In its first version, the City Master plan involved only the planning of the expansion of vehicle circulation. Yet, during the fifties an attempt had already emerged in the city to establish an integrated master plan involving circulation, housing, and places for factories and leisure. This gave rise to an attempt to produce an integrated city master plan that, in the case of Porto Alegre, dated from the period of the authoritarian regime in Brazil. In 1979 the first city master plan emerged in the city with the following characteristics: the separation between urban and rural parts of the city; differentiated urban zones according to the planning units; and the incorporation of some emerging forms of participation. Thus, we can see a differentiation between Porto Alegre and other Brazilian capitals: Porto Alegre was introducing elements of urban planning and urban participation while these discussions were just emerging in other parts of Brazil.

Porto Alegre’s city master plan of 1979 remained the city plan for 20 years. In this period, the problem of the continuous sub-division of urban land and of the impossibility to legalize urban occupation in public lands emerged. Yet in Porto Alegre this problem, which was part of the debates during the Constituent Assembly and the elaboration of the Statute of the City, received a differentiated response. The PT administered the city of Porto Alegre for 16 years and introduced participatory budgeting, posing in the agenda the issue of the continuous sub-divisions of urban land and the possibility of the state to assign property title for the occupants of public land. Several legal instruments for urban planning emerged in Porto Alegre in parallel with the debates on urban planning at the federal level. Still, in 1991, the city differentiated its permanent stock of urban land destined to green areas and urban preservation from occupied lands that could be used to legalize urban tenure of poor urban dwellers. The law also forecast collective concession of urban property by the city. (Tribunal Justiça RGS,1999). In 1994, the city created its urban planning fund, part of which was established through the creation and selling of urban soil. Thus, Porto Alegre anticipated in its urban law

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instruments that most cities would use only after the approval of the Statute of the City, showing that civil and political society together gave the city a leeway in urban reform that no other city in Brazil had at that point. However, what is interesting is that the courts did not block such attempts.

The legal system of the State of Rio Grande do Sul interpreted the existing laws in a progressive way, favoring the assignment by the state of lands occupied by poor urban dwellers. In 1995, the Corregedor Geral de Justiça (Public Overseer of the Legal System) issued an understanding in which he deemed it possible to legalize urban occupation of public land. The Justice Tribunal of the state of Rio Grande do Sul confirmed this understanding stating that ‘parcelling of urban land and its registration are not against federal law; only they are not dealt with by the law and, due to the peculiarity of the case, registration is a way of guaranteeing property rights’ (Tribunal Justiça RGS, 39-1999). The Brazilian Supreme Court acknowledged the constitutionality of the decision of Rio Grande do Sul Courts. Thus, it is interesting to note that São Paulo had to wait for the federal law in order to grant property titles whereas Rio Grande do Sul could grant property titles to the urban poor in spite of the inexistence of federal law allowing it.

Porto Alegre’s consensus for a new city master plan emerged in 1993 during the first Conference of the City. The new city master plan was crafted in 1995 and 1996 and sent to City Hall. In that year, civil society associations demanded more debate and the new administration that had just been inaugurated withdrew the project from City Council in order to allow more debates (Guimaraens, 2006). These debates involved mainly the limits for new construction in the city. During the year of 1997 new public audiences on the law took place and it returned to City Hall where it was approved two years later in November, 5, 1999.

Again, it is interesting to compare São Paulo and Porto Alegre’s processes of enacting city master plans as a way to compare the need for action by civil society at the national level and the relationship with local politics. In the case of São Paulo the enactment of urban controls before the approval of the Statute of the City was impossible in spite of the strength of civil society urban movements in the city., Even during the PT’s tenure in the city between 1988 and 1992 most proposals for urban reform were defeated in city council or made null by the courts as had been the case with progressive urban taxation (Singer, 1994). In the case of Porto Alegre, civil society strength and the PT’s administration initiative made possible advances in urban legislation such as the outorga onerosa (property concession with onus) even before the approval of the Statute of the City. It is also interesting to see the different role played by the courts. The courts in São Paulo were activated by conservative real estate interests in the city whereas in Porto Alegre the courts anticipated devices of the Statute of the City. Thus, it is possible to state that without the Statute of the City most of its new devices would have never been implemented in the city of São Paulo.

Salvador is an interesting third case of the elaboration of city master plans. Its plan was elaborated between 1999 and 2002. In 1999, the city hired a private consultancy service

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to provide it with a preliminary diagnosis on urban development (Sampaio, 2000). There is not much available information on what took place between 1999 and 2002. Yet, the important point is that no civil society association or urban planning movement participated in the diagnosis of the city urban situation, allowing the administration to make its own diagnosis based on real estate interests. In 2003, the city of Salvador set up two public audiences in order to collect suggestions for its master plan. One of the audiences took place and the other did not due to the lack of publicity for the meeting, in spite of the fact that the law required more of a public audience to take place during the elaboration of the plan (see page 13). Salvador Mayor Antônio Imbassahy sent the proposal of the city master plan to city council ignoring the fact that he failed to meet the Statute of the City requirements. Salvador’s Federation of Neighborhood Associations and the city section of the Brazilian Bar Association – OAB - asked the city public prosecutor (ministerio publico) to propose a civil suit against the approval of the law by City Hall without the city fulfilling the whole requirements of the Statute of the City (Caribe, 2005). It won the civil suit on November 12, 2003 making null the process of elaboration of Salvador’s master plan. The new administration, headed by the PDT and inaugurated in January 2005, changed the city approach to public audiences and is currently sponsoring public audiences with the population in order to elaborate a new plan to be submitted to city hall.

Salvador’s case when compared to São Paulo and Porto Alegre allows us to propose a typology of the different contexts in which civil society national actions become effective. Salvador’s case shows that in a context of weak civil society and progressive political society actors, the new law, the Statute of the City mattered and has been able to block the actions of conservative sectors in the city. Thus, the effectiveness of national civil society actions varied according to different configurations at table 4 below shows.

Table 5. Configuration of civil and political society and its impact on city master plans.

Civil society organization

Political society actions

Legal actions involved

City Council

São Paulo Strong, being one of the origins of the urban reform movement. However, real estate interests in the city are also very well organized.

Divided throughout the democratisation period. The PT administered the city twice. Conservative sectors administered it three times.

Legal actions were filed by conservative sectors in order to allow real estate interests to be present at the public audiences.

Approved the City Master Plan (CMP) with changes negotiated with conservative sectors.

Porto Alegre Very strong. It participated in the Congress of the City in

No legal actions were taken.

Approved CMPwithout negotiations

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which the revision of the city master plan has been decided.

with conservative sectors.

Salvador Weak Hegemonized by the P.F.L, a right wing party. Controlled by the Magalhaes family.

Legal actions were taken by civil society and progressive political actors in order to offset real state interests.

CMP was declared illegal after being sent to City Council

In this paper’s concluding remarks, I will elaborate more on the characteristics of national civil society and its relationship with local social actors in the case of urban reform in Brazil.

National civil society and urban reform in Brazil

The Statute of the City is a case of successful actions by civil society actors in the crafting of the national legislation due to the long-term presence of the FNRU in the Brazilian Congress and its successful lobbying capacity. At the Constituent Assembly important legislations emerged in the area of health, social assistance, agrarian reform and labor rights. In this respect, Brazil does not seem to be very different from other recently democratized countries such as South Africa. However, the difference between Brazil and other recently democratized countries is the long-term continuous organization of civil society actors at both the national and the local level. This kind of organization is linked to the non-overlapping between political actors’ motives and civil society actors’ strategies in Brazil. Even in the case of the arrival of the PT to the national government, Brazilian civil society actors have been more critical of Lula’s government actions than in the case of the arrival of the ANC (African National Congress) to power positions.10 The urban reform movement is a very instructive case about the non-overlapping of civil society and political society throughout Brazilian democratization. The urban legislation that emerged in 2001 was a result of long term civil society actions in Congress. The Brazilian case is also a good example of how civil society may act in Congress. Primary alliances were made with left-wing parties but center parties have never been excluded from civil society alliances. Again, this differentiates the Brazilian case from the South African case due to the diversification of political alliances, and most likely from the Philippine case as well due to the independence of the lobbying process by civil society from governing alliances.10 The reason for this difference has been suggested by Steven Friedman who differentiated a national liberation movement from a left-wing party. The PT is a left-wing party with different strategies of government that may or may not remain legitimate among its constituencies. The ANC still retains the legitimacy of a people’s liberating movement.

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A second important characteristic of the Brazilian case is the nature of the civil society alliance and the change in strategy as the democratization process evolved. The urban reform movement resembled most of the civil society movements in Brazil during the 1980s.However, it was the first one to figure out the need to change its composition and strategy in the process of struggling for urban reform.The move from MNRU to FNRU showed the ability of the urban reform movement to keep close links with the PT but was also able to move beyond the political spectrum in order to craft a new legislation which was crucial for the approval of the Statute of the City.Thus, civil society power at the national level and its ability to selectively negotiate with key political actors was one of the decisive factors for the emergence of legislation at the national level in a non-favorable context of re-articulation of conservative interests in Brazil during the early and the mid-nineties. The FNRU also knew how to take good advantage of the change in power correlation after Collor’s impeachment in 1992. It resumed its campaign for urban reform based on the new power correlation after 1994, knowing that it could not count just with the forces of the left. Flexibility in strategy and the ability to negotiate were major assets of the FNRU.

The third important characteristic of the Brazilian case of urban reform is the interaction between national legislation and the local context because it allows us to differentiate between different dimensions of state action. I have showed in this paper how national legislation led to three different political configurations in the process of approval of the city master plan. São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Salvador are cases that show well the way national legislation depends on the political context. Again, Brazil can be differentiated from South Africa. In the case of South Africa the local context shows a more homogeneous presence of the ANC. In Brazil though the PT has had a strong presence in the three local contexts, this presence is not homogeneous and depends more upon local than national politics. In the case of Porto Alegre, a broad social and political coalition including sectors of the legal system is what explains the capacity of social and political actors in the city to pursue urban reform. In the case of São Paulo, a new city master plan would have never emerged if national legislation did not interact with a Workers Party administration and strong civil society actors. Even in that case, city council and the legal system were able to block significant parts of the city master plan. Porto Alegre and Salvador are different cases that express opposite extremes. Salvador is a completely different case that shows the continuous presence of conservative semi-authoritarian political actors in city politics. In Salvador, a new city master plan without the devices for less democratic cases, such as mandatory public audiences, would have led to a city master plan without any of the features introduced by the Statute of the City.

Thus, national civil society in the case of urban reform in Brazil introduces an element of homogenization of civil society strength that is still very uneven in democratic Brazil due to different local traditions. The urban reform movement expressed well the new strength of civil society actors at two levels: large cities and national politics. The emergence of the new legislation has been a huge advance in democratic Brazil and showed an amazing capacity of articulation between civil society and progressive

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political actors. Though it is true that not all local contexts required the Statute of the City, it is also true that most local contexts needed that law and that the supra-party element helped to craft the new legislation. Its effects in new contexts are already clear and are of two types: forbidding real estate interests to command the urban policy of a city even if it is run by conservative government, and allowing progressive political society to pursue reform in adverse political contexts. It will remain to be seen whether the new legislation can also influence urban politics in small and mid-size cities in the near future.

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