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Existing studies about the politics of southern cities, particularly Latin American cities, need to pay more attention to the political institutions behind urban governance. These institutions, additionally, were not created by design but are a product of intertwined historical processes. This article analyzes the main features and transformations of Latin American local governments, their politics, and governance, looked at from the angle of their historical formation. Mobilizing arguments from urban studies and political science usually developed apart, I start with the legacies of two intertwined historical processes—urbanization(s) and state formation(s)—to later observe their recent transformations since the recent return(s) to democracy. The reconstruction of these intertwined historical trajectories and of the effects of the present democratic period help to jointly explain the most important features of the politics of local governments in Latin America that influence their governance and actions—capacities, political grammars, actors, and coalitions—as well as their recent transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do local governments produce redistributive urban policies, particularly in cities of the Global South? Present debates oscillate between highlighting these cities' governmental problems or sustaining the enabling role of institutionalized social participation. From the standpoint of São Paulo, Brazil, this article shows a different picture. The trajectories of 27 redistributive urban programs follow a conflictive and incremental expansion and diversification of redistributive policies through time. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques indicate that program creation usually happened in left-wing administrations. Most of them were maintained after government swings, although at lower pace, due mainly to the pressure of political competition, but also on account of multi-level politics and policy routinization. Even previously discontinued programs tended to reemerge later, due to the embeddedness of civil society actors in policy communities and multi-level politics. Therefore, trajectories were explained by a combination of partisan politics and median voter mechanisms with policy production processes and actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]