Title:
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Explaining participatory performance : the institutional reproduction of participatory planning models in the city of Buenos Aires
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The central aim of this thesis is to explain the weak participatory performance achieved
by mechanisms of public participation in urban planning and management in the City of
Buenos Aires. The analysis bears on the adoption by the Buenos Aires municipality of
two participatory planning schemes modelled on initiatives successfully implemented in
other urban settings: the Strategic Plan and the Participatory Budget.
The theoretical foundations of the research rest on the assumption that the traditional
scholarly literature on public participation in planning and development studies does not
provide the analytical framework necessary to fully capture and understand the
determinants of the `participatory performance' of initiatives of public engagement in
urban policy-making. It is posited that the conceptual tools associated with the literature
on `new institutional theory' offer an alternative theoretical perspective which is wellsuited
to the analysis of the adoption and evolution of participatory planning schemes.
New institutional theory has been consistently used to analyse and compare the economic
performance of different institutional arrangements. The endeavour is to exploit its
analytical potential to examine the performance of participatory planning mechanisms
which are traditionally expected by the academic and development community to support
a transition from purely electoral, representative forms of democracy towards `higher'
modes of popular involvement in democratic decision-making.
Strategic planning and participatory budgeting in Buenos Aires are examined through the
analysis of two phases of institutional change: the first phase corresponds to the adoption
of `foreign' planning models through institutional borrowing, whereas the second phase
refers to the process of institutionalisation of these imported schemes in their host setting.
This thesis seeks to contribute to the theoretical refinement of specific aspects of the
literature on institutional change, and to assist policy-makers in enhancing the
performance of the participatory planning mechanisms they choose to adopt.
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