Construção e desconstrução das Subprefeituras na cidade de São Paulo no governo Marta Suplicy

Abstract

This research deals with the implementation of the Subprefectures in São Paulo city during the term of mayor Marta Suplicy (2001/2004). The article seeks to contribute for a lacking theme in the Brazilian political science: the intramunicipal decentralization and their effects in the administrative and political game. We perfomed a qualitative analisys using the case study method and the process tracing to identify the causal conditions that influenced in the administrative and political configuration of the Subprefectures. We discuss how the Subprefectures served to the government to consolidate its legislative support, despite of putting in second place the participatory democracy in the regions. We analyze how the government envisaged the resistence of municipal Secretaries fearful of losing power to the Subprefectures. The article discusses two hyphotheses. The fisrt, is that government backed the proposed project of Subprefectures before the opposition from municipal Secretaries, fed by the internal dispute in the PT, majoritary party, and their goals of power in these bodies. The decentralization was conditioned to the level of adhesion from the sectoral policies. The second one understands the the government abandoned the model of Subprefectures as cores of local power supported for social control, because these passed to serve to expand the political alliances in parlament, relegating the Participatory Budget to a secondary position. The hypotheses were conformed because the causal explanation suggested was evidenced in the empirical analysis. Administratively the limited scope of the Subprefectures had as core cause the fearful of the Secretaries of losing power to the regions. The decentralization depended how the Secretaties involved in this process. Politicaly, the Subprefectures were resources to the government to increase its coaltion support being this the causal explanation of the priority conferred by the government to the aldermen's logic.