Governando a nós mesmos? Governamentalidade, governança e participação social em grandes projetos urbanos: descortinando a ponte Salvador-Itaparica, Ba

Abstract

Public participation became essential in the formulation and management of public policies in Brazil with the 1988 Constitution, responding to the democratic desire post-military dictatorship. The City Statute of 2001 regulated this participation, requiring it in Master Plans, a practice known as urban governance. Despite these laws, collective will has not fully prevailed. This research explores this paradox, investigating how neoliberal urban management appropriates participatory processes to legitimize urban interventions that privatize public spaces and commodify the city. This phenomenon intensified after the 2008 Financial Crisis, when Brazil sought to attract capital through large urban projects, such as the megabridge between Salvador and Itaparica Island, proposed in 2009 by the Bahia government, driven by neoliberal urbanism with preparations for the 2014 World Cup. The research examines the Salvador-Itaparica bridge project on two scales: macro, focusing on urban governance and corporate management; and micro, investigating the participatory processes in the Master Plans of the municipalities of Vera Cruz and Itaparica. Using Michel Foucault's governmentality as an analytical tool, the research assumes that social participation is used as a technology of power to lead citizens to accept the megaproject, reducing the democratic deficit caused by urban intervention. Methodologically, the study investigates this process of induction by analyzing social participation in practice through direct observations of participatory instances. The data interpretation concludes that state power influenced citizens' subjectivity, guiding them to govern themselves according to state interests and weakening their capacity to oppose the project, as a network and equivalence agenda did not form to enhance participants' resistance to being governed by neoliberal rationality.