This article presents and discusses the importance of political processes on the explanation of patterns of urban public investments. For this purpose, we use primary data on the investments made by the Municipal Government of São Paulo on urban infrastructure equipments from 1978 to 1998. This type of public policy had been traditionally analyzed from the perspectives of structural Marxism, of neomarxist studies of social movements, of an attenuated version of North-American pluralism, and of an urban version the elite theory. For these literatures, the processes that occur inside the State, as well as the dynamics of the decision making processes would have less importance than actors located in society and elements related to the rules that regulate political processes. The information we present here indicates the insufficiency of current explanations and highlights the importance of two other elements not sufficiently considered by the literature: political and ideological cleavages, and the presence and influence of private companies related to the production of the city.
Politics; Public policies; Interest intermediation; Urban infrastructure; São Paulo
