ALICE Z. XU

The Political origins of slum growth and segregation in urban brazil

A growing literature in distributive politics finds that segregation in cities has major implications for public goods provision and distributive outcomes. But why are some cities much more segregated than others in the first place? In this paper, I explore the political origins of the segregation of the poor across cities in Brazil. I first argue that both neoliberal economic reforms in the 1990s and the era of social housing programs in the 2000s were federal initiatives that had segregative effects. However, the partisan ideologies of local mayoral coalitions distort how federal policies impact the development of cities. Depending on how the timing of federal policies (i.e., critical junctures) coincided with mayoral coalitions that happen to be in power at the time, cities became either more or less segregated. Using a close-elections RDD and a panel survey of municipal governments, I first show that during the neoliberal era (1990s), cities that happened to be governed by leftist mayors experienced reduced segregation, while those governed by centrist and right-wing coalitions became more segregated. In contrast, the effect of mayoral partisanship on segregation flips during the roll-out of the federal social housing program, Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV). Cities governed by the Left at the time (2008-2012) became more segregated, while those governed by centrist and right-wing coalitions reduced segregation by opposing the MCMV. The findings highlight the unintended consequences of popular policies, such as social housing programs, and how the timing of federal policies and municipal partisan coalitions interact to create divergent patterns of urban development.