Urban partnerships in Buenos Aires. The new panacea for democracy?

IVANA SOCOLOFF

Perspectives on Democracy and Social Justice in the South

CODESRIA-CLACSO-APISA Ed

Lugar: Dakar, Senegal; Año: 2014;

In the case of Buenos Aires (Argentina), both institutional autonomy in 1994 and participatory institutions have come together with the decline in the conditions of urban integration and growing inequality, due to changes in the state apparatus and the policies promoted by the Federal Government during the 90s. In other words, when democracy in the city was growing, democracy of the city was declining. Taking this into account, this chapter focuses in the study of ´urban policies´ in Buenos Aires, in a context where partnerships between public and private actors has become a key element in urban public design, since they are supposed to deepen democracy and increase ´urban governance´. By analyzing political rationalities embedded in discourses coming from key local actors, the chapter discusses governance approaches to urban policies, which assumes neutral and universal strategies and techniques to deal with urban problems. For us, urban partnerships are not a neutral, since institutional designs -though contested in everyday life by local actors- imply a certain amount of political assumptions on who, when, how and where certain actors are ´able´ to perform. The chapter also presents the idea that during what some authors call the ´Buenos Aires neoliberal decade´ (90s), there were actually competing ideas on urban policies. Neoliberalism, far from being a unique discourse about the role of the state and the entrepreneurs in the city, was an area of dispute that actors seek to fill strategically. In Buenos Aires there was no uncritical acceptance of ideas that circulate internationally. In contrasts, world-spread ´neoliberal´ ideas were contested, redefined, adapted, and transformed, as a result of local disputes and historical power relations. Finally, the chapter presents some results of the discursive analysis in the form of a typology of overlapping definitions of roles assigned to the ´neoliberal state´ of the 90s. Some remarks are also made with regards to the opportunities and the obstacles that this discursive ambiguity offers to a democratization of the city, in a context of increasing participation of capital in the production of the city.