The construction of political-territorial ties: evidence from of São Paulo

Abstract

Current interpretations on the inner workings of Brazilian city councils are rooted in the scholarly debate of national politics. In the latter, the presence of legislation proposals with territorial goals and concentrated electoral voting patterns are the main evidence of distributivism/clientelism. We argue, however, that such characteristics of legislative and electoral politics at the national level are ill-suited proxies for analysis of the local level, failing to capture nuances of political mobilization in cities. Instead, by means of a mixed-methods analysis of an instrument called representatives’ requests – in-depth interviews, participant observation, and local spatial autocorrelation hypothesis tests – we argue that city councilors' geographically targeted actions take place through a capillary and rooted structure of brokers that feeds back and creates ties throughout local mandates and voters.

brokers; city councilors; territorial ties; representatives’ requests; city council