Power and Politics in Third World Cities

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Power and Politics in Third World Cities
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Outline

• Arenas of power
• State power
• Social power
• ODA, NGOs and Governance
• Urban social movements

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Arenas of Power

• State
• Core is executive and Judicial are core
• Power exercised through law and administrative
  apparatus
• Civil Society
• Core is household and social networks
• Power exercised through social power
• Corporate Economy
• Core is corporation
• Power exercised through access to finance and
  capital
• Political Community
• Core is political organizations and social
  movements
• Power exercised through vote, demonstrate, lobby

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Third World Elite States

• Soft states
• Weak control over public administration
  activities
• Laws and regulations more frequently disobeyed
• Reinforcement of corruption and elite domination

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Sources of Elite Domination

• Colonial influence
• Neo-colonial power relationships
• Internal class dynamics
• Low public sector salaries

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Bases of Social Power

• Defensible life space
• Surplus time
• Knowledge and skills
• Appropriate information
• Instruments of work and production
• Financial resources
• Social networks
• Social organization

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Patron-Client Relationships

• Reciprocal but unequal relationship
• Assistance in exchange for political support
• Facilitated by lower level of institutionalization
  or contractual arrangements for access
• Also driven by kinship relationships

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ODA and Governance

• Official development assistance major influence
  in Third World
• World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs
  typically further relations of dependence
• Third World dependence on aid policies
• Bilateral aid carries political agenda as well

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NGOs and Governance

• Filling gaps between needs of vulnerable urban
  groups and provisions of services
• Providing assistance and advocating policy reform
• Typically small players compared to ODA, but
  frequently also seen as delivery vehicle for ODA
• Frequently tense relationship with host
  governments, though wide-range of political
  beliefs

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Key points

• Unequal urban governance systems underpinned by
  global and local social structures
• Some limited opportunities for altering power
  relations
• What are the potentials for real alternatives?

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Urban Social Movement Definition

• ..a conscious collective practice originating in
  urban issues, able to produce qualitative changes
  in the urban system, local culture and political
  institutions in contradiction to the dominant
  social interests institutionalized as such at the
  societal level Manuel Castells (1983)

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Types of Urban Social Movements-1

• Collective Consumption Trade Unionism
• Goal City as use value, not commodity
• Demands Social wage (including housing,
  education, health care, water, etc.), quality of
  life, conservation of history
• Adversarial Goals Appropriation of land rent,
  infrastructure for profitable production
• City as spatial support for life vs. City as a
  commodity or a support of commodity production
  and circulation

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Types of Urban Social Movements-2

• Community movements
• Goal Identity, cultural autonomy and
  communication
• Demands Neighborhood life, ethnic/autonomous
  cultures, historical traditions
• Adversarial goals Dominant culture,
  standardization of meaning, urban isolation
• City as a communication network and source of
  cultural innovation vs. Despatialization of
  programmed one-way information flows

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Types of Urban Social Movements-3

• Citizen Movements
• Goal Territorially based self-management
• Demands Local autonomy, neighborhood
  decentralization, citizen participation
• Adversarial goals Centralism, Bureaucratization,
  authoritarianism
• City as a self-governing entity, vs. city as
  subject of the central state at the service of
  world-wide empire

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• "Why urban movements? Why the emphasis on local
  communities? Have not people understood that
  they need an international working class movement
  to oppose the multi-national corporations, a
  strong, democratic parliament, reinforced by
  participatory democracy, to control the
  centralized state, and a multiple, interactive
  communication system to use the new technologies
  of the media to express (not to suppress) the
  cultural diversity of society? Why, instead of
  choosing the right ones, do people insist on
  aiming at the local targets?" The answer "For
  the simple reason that, according to available
  information, people appear to have no other
  choice...so that when people find themselves
  unable to control the world, they simply shrink
  the world to the size of their community".

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SA Civic Movement-Background

• Divided apartheid citiesspatially and
  administratively
• Popular mobilization in wake of Soweto 1976
  student uprising
• Broad-based, interconnected issues and
  strategieseducation, rents, housing, corrupt
  local councilors, political representation,
  cultural expression
• New political dispensation led to
  institutionalization of some demands, weakening
  of social mobilization
• Outcomes?