El gobierno de las megalópolis, el caso de Brasil, São Paulo: gestión metropolitana, descentralización y participación como desafíos simultáneos

The government of a megalopolis, such as São Paulo, shows singular challenges that do not exist in less complex urban contexts. Being a city of a country with a recent industrialized economy, with an income (functional and geographical) highly concentrated, that has resumed the democracy for only one quarter of a century, this megacity lives with its own political and organizational assignments, due to the contradictory character of the political behavior of its habitants/ voters and of the traditionalist nature of populism and patronage in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled and between the Executive and Legislative powers at the local level. In such context, the difficulties to prosecute the assignments of the metropolitan organization, the decentralization and the institutionalization of citizen participatory channels in the governance and administrative activities are huge. The centrifuge forces (of the decentralization of the local government, through subprefectures), the centripetal forces ( of the metropolitan organization process) and the diffuse forces (of the claiming popular participation) act simultaneously over the deciding processes, in São Paulo, receiving, still, state and national political influences, since the city is a very significant historically producer of political and electoral capital. The analysis of the recent experience of the creation of the subprefectures and the representative counsels (fixed in the Municipality Organic Law of 1990) and the attempt to implement the participatory budgeting, in two occasions (1989-1992 and 2001-2004), reveal some of the social and political reasons that make difficult the establishment of a solidly democratic governance and of a more efficient public administration in the metropolitan area of São Paulo.

Características de las experiencias españolas de presupuesto participativo: intento de encuadramiento en una tipología

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is an innovative methodology of public budget management. It includes the common citizen in decision-making process, which does not happen in traditional budget processes. PB emerged in Brazil in the last two decades of the last century (Porto Alegre’s experience is the best known model) and spread to several countries since then. The spread of the practice has produced significant changes in relation to the original proposals, requiring the efforts of analysts to identify them in different situations, carried out by different political actors, with different objectives. Pires and Pineda (2008a) proposed a typology of PB sought to contemplate the experiences from the simplest to the most daring and less sophisticated to the pretentious, so as to allow assessment of the maximum number of cases. In this article the Spanish experiences of PB are characterized from this typology, highlighting its most relevant aspects. It is a useful study to understand the evolution of PB in Spain, but also to continue the effort to better define what is and can become the participatory budget as a possible tool for improving the management of local public finance and democracy

Participación politica y derechos humanos, una questión de genero en la escuela

Este texto trae consideraciones respecto de una investigación que se está desarrollando en escuelas públicas Marília (SP). El objetivo es observar cómo la democracia es experimentada en la existencia cotidiana de vida escolar y cómo los derechos humanos y la cuestión de género aparecen en las relaciones sociales y en su proyecto político-pedagógico. Se supone que la educación democrática sólo se concretará en la escuela si dos dimensiones de la educación escolar son trabajados: la escuela como locus de participación democrática y los estudios basados en la ética y los derechos humanos, que no podrán descartar la cuestión del género. Hemos elaborado que la educación para la ciudadanía no puede descartar la ciudadanía política, además de los derechos humanos y cuestiones de género, de lo contrario, no niños y niñas sensibles a ellos.