Living conditions, State and public policies

3. State and social networks.

Recent studies based on the analysis of social networks have advanced our understanding of internal State processes, shining a light on the relationship between the State and its immediate political environment, especially politicians and business. The result of these studies revealed the importance of these networks to effective deployment of public policies.

Given the specificities of the study policies, these investigations did not significantly contribute to our understanding of the relationship between internal State networks, the associative network and the public that uses such policies. On the other hand, the literature on social inequality in the city focuses primarily on the so-called street-level bureaucracies and citizen organizations.

To fill this gap, this study will focus on housing policies over the course of the past 5 administrations in the city of Sao Paulo. Housing policies are extremely important to urban inequality, and have their own set of important organized groups and bureaucracy, and will contribute to our understanding about the State and its role in reproducing urban social inequality.

Coordinator: Eduardo C. Marques

Research team: Renata Rocha Gonçalves