International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
	[ Workshop home page] [ Index of papers]

Daniel Chavez (University of Kent at Canterbury)

"Decentralization and Participatory Urban Management in Montevideo, Uruguay "

The paper focuses on sub-munici-pal decentralization and popular participation in the context of a left-oriented program of local development. The analysis is empirically grounded in data on the process of participatory urban management of Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, between February 1990 and July 1998.

This experience is framed in the context of a profound reorientation of the theoretical and ideological foundations of the global debate on development strategies. During the previous four decades, from the early theorists of modernization to the succeeding neomarxists and contemporary neoliberals, development thinkers and policy-makers had agreed on concentrating on the role of the state and the economic structures for national growth. In the 1990s, the debate is increasingly focusing on the relationship between democracy and development. In this perspective, concepts such as civil society, decentralization, social capital, synergy and citizens' participation are becoming centerpieces of contemporary developmental discourses.

This trend can be particularly observed in Latin America. In this region, a counter-hegemonic political culture is emerging, associated with successful experiences of participatory and decentralized municipal governance conducted by the left. Especially with reference to the PT - Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party) in Brazil and the FA - Frente Amplio (Broad Front) in Uruguay, local politics are turning to be a privileged space for the left to experiment with social reforms and 'learning how to govern'. The 'new' Latin American left of the 1990s proposes deepening and radicalizing democracy at the municipal level - fostering participación popular - as an end in itself, and not simply as a step toward power at national level.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, while in other parts of the world the left was dramatically losing terrain, throughout Latin America leftist parties won several elections for strategic local offices. In the 1988 local elections the Workers Party won control of the municipalities of cities accounting for 40% of the Brazilian economy. In Uruguay, the Broad Front won the municipal elections of 1989 in Montevideo, repeated this performance in 1994, and will very likely win once again the elections scheduled for February 2000.

In spite of the singularities of these different experiences of progressive local government, there are a set of common strategies in the search of alternatives 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, marked 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 Latin American municipalities inherited by the left. Vis-a-vis this reality, the progressive political forces explicitly undertake the construction of an alternative model for local development as an opportunity for challenging the political and cultural hegemony of the neoliberal agenda.

Does this model of participatory and decentralized municipal administration represent a more democratic and efficient pattern of local development? Does the new institutional framework fostered by the left contribute to the constitution of a more reflexive civil society? What are the long-terms prospects of this model? Is it sustainable? Based on empirical data from the experience of municipal government conducted by the Frente Amplio since 1990 up to date, with general references to the regional and national background, and in relation to the contemporary academic and political debate, these are the fundamental questions this paper will address.