Decentralization and participatory urban management in Montevideo

Abstract

A counter-hegemonic political culture is emerging in Latin America from certain experiences of participatory and decentralised municipal management developed since the mid 1980s. Especially with reference to the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, FA) in Uruguay and the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, PT) in Brazil, local politics is turning to be a privileged space for a renovated Left experimenting with social reforms and 'learning how to govern'. These political forces propose deepening and radicalising democracy at the municipal level as an end in itself, and not simply as a step toward power at the national level.

By the mid 1990s, there were progressive mayors in capital cities and other important metropolitan areas of various South American countries. In the 1988 local elections, the Workers Party won control of the municipal government of cities accounting for 40% of the Brazilian economy. In Uruguay, the Broad Front won the municipality of the capital city - Montevideo - in 1989 with 34% of the votes, and repeated this performance in 1994 obtaining 44% of the votes.

In spite of the particularities of these different experiences of local government, there are a set of common strategies in the search of progressive courses for local development, in response to the deep crisis that shaped the social, economic and cultural features of the regional urban scenario of the 1990s. The consolidation of a dual city, characterised by the explosion of great inequalities in the access to urban goods and services, the expansion of realities of social violence and the radical restructuring of the urban economy, are common features of the municipalities inherited by the Left. Vis-a-vis the precedent reality, the progressive political forces explicitly assume the construction of an alternative model for local development as an opportunity for challenging the political and cultural hegemony of the market paradigm.

Does this model of participatory and decentralised municipal administration represent a more democratic and efficient pattern of governance? Does the new institutional framework fostered by the Left contribute to the constitution of a more 'reflexive civil society'? What are the long-term prospects of this model? Is it sustainable? Is it replicable in other social and political contexts? Focusing on the process of sub-municipal decentralisation in Montevideo, and in relation to the broader Latin American academic and political debate, these are the fundamental questions this paper will address.