Left and Right: What Do They Stand for in Cities and City-regions?

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Abstract

As it is widely known in the fields of public policy and urban studies, research work on the impact of ideology and party politics on cities’ policy outputs is few and far between. Even though ideology and political orientation have been placed in a central position in the studies on elections, voter’s choice, electoral coalitions, and government formation, they have been destined to a marginal position as a variable able to explain policy outputs, both at the national and subnational levels. As Douglas and Sharpe (1984) remind us, until recently “output “analyses were the domain of disciplines such as economics and sociology. Policy results were mainly explained by sociodemographic variables.
Since the 1980s, this intellectual landscape has been changing, although at a very slow pace: scholars first in the UK and later in the US have evaluated to what extent cities’ spending levels and patterns were affected by ideology and party orientation. Though the hypothesis was quite clear – left-controlled municipalities were expected to spend more and to prioritize social rubrics in comparison with right-controlled municipalities – the research results were far from satisfactory and both the strength and direction of ideology as an explanatory variable were not set up in the British case (see Sharpe and Newton (1984) and Hoggart (1987). Contradicting results were also found in US studies on attitudinal data correlating party ideology and government performance: whereas Connonly and Mason (2016) have found that the more liberal representatives opposed cutting welfare spending over other services increase, Langoria (1994) and Saiz (1999) have concluded that US’s mayors, no matter their ideology, fitted into Paul Peterson’s (1981) model and prioritized developmental over redistributive policies.
While following the same intellectual path of output research, we have tried to evaluate to what extent the neoliberal wave that swept Latin American cities in the last two decades has been either fastened or braked by political factors. In a word, if Latin American cities, severely affected by huge national deficits, have resorted to neoliberal regulatory practices, and have been acting more and more like “growth machines”, it was reasonable to expect that the neo-liberalization process could be, if not completely reversed, hindered in left-oriented municipalities. With the database of 5,570 Brazilian municipalities in Brazil, we have correlated over 20 years the cities’ political orientation with their commitment to neoliberal practices and regulations. We found no “left-wing” or “right-wing” effect on the degree and direction of such commitment.
Thus, if at the local level the left-right divide has little or no impact on the cities’ spending patterns or the extension neoliberal practices are put in place, the academic research should try to spot where this divide makes a difference in the life of cities. Assuming that the left-right axis has evolved in its meaning over time, in this paper we test the hypothesis according to which left-oriented municipalities are more prone to support and enhance pluralism than right-oriented cities. Resorting to the 2019 Census database (MUNIC) of Brazilian municipalities, we test the hypothesis according to which left-oriented cities will be more likely to have: a) specific agency and legislation aimed at protecting minority groups; b) specific agency and legislation aimed at protecting traditional populations; c) specific agency and legislation aimed at facing racial inequality; d) specific agency and legislation aimed at protecting LBTQ people; e) specific agency and legislation aimed at protecting human rights. Besides, we test the hypothesis according to which in the left-oriented municipalities there will be more women as city council members than in the right-oriented cities. If those hypotheses are confirmed, and the preliminary results show they are, we move a step further in debating the role of ideology in subnational units: if the left/right divide says little about spending patterns and economic policy, it makes a difference as far as pluralism is concerned.

Author

• NELSON ROJAS CARVALHO, UFRRJ