The Politics of Incremental Progressivism

Finally, in the conclusion, Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques compares the policy trajectories presented by the chapters and draws lessons for future analyses of urban politics and policies. Our conclusions challenge widely disseminated ideas about Southern city policies, usually based on the centrality of political participation, or the effects of economic and institutional macro‐processes, or combinations of clientelism, patronage, and corruption. Contrary to these notions, the São Paulo policies tended to follow incremental advancements that reduced inequalities of access, although differently by specific policies and governments, and marked by numerous conflicts.

This trajectory was a result of the slow but cumulative construction of government capacities, institutions and policy instruments within a highly competitive political environment that pushed mayors and parties to deliver more and better policies. Ideological differences between governments were central to explaining policy innovations and the differences between easy and hard redistribution policies. At the same time, policy production processes and their governance patterns help to explain the different paces of change, resilience and latency in distinct policy sectors.

In general, therefore, the trajectory of policy construction and change in São Paulo involved the same actors and mechanisms that explain policy production and urban governments elsewhere, although in locally specific combinations, as in any other large metropolis.

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