The Network of Local Administrators in São Paulo

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates an almost completely unexplored facet of government formation and of the construction of bureaucracies and capabilities at the local level: the existence of a network of decision makers and senior bureaucrats who move over time between positions at different agencies in the administration of a big city. Networks of this kind weave agencies, policy areas and administrations together and are responsible for a substantial part of the informal practices and processes that construct governance and underlie formal governmental procedures. Setting out from a newly constructed database, the article analyses the network built by the migration of top officials between departments and agencies in São Paulo city from 1985 to 2012, involving dozens of secretaries and approximately five thousand individuals in more than one hundred different government positions. The results indicate the existence of a dense and complex relational fabric that connects the interior of each government, weaves thematic areas internally between agencies and governments, and links governments with the same political affinities. The data indicates that the network structure is an outcome of processes associated simultaneously with political cleavages and policy field specialization, providing important elements for coordination between agencies and administrations.

public policies; institutional positions; policy coordination; social networks; São Paulo