Urban Brazil: Visions, Afflictions, and Governance Lessons By Iva ...

Conversely, when the likelihood of better outcomes is not perceived, a commitment to implementing urban improvements is less likely, which also reduces the likelihood of more satisfactory policies. Under these circumstances, governments remain prisoners of damaging policies, leading to a poorer governance strategy.

The logical questions to ask then are how or under what conditions this ability to implement more satisfactory policies emerges, and how the course of damaging policies can be altered. The literature on urban politics in the United States reveals a great number of local government initiatives that have transformed urban spaces through the modernization of municipal public services, elimination of bureaucratic inefficiencies, and creation of economic enhancements.⁸ My search for factors that can influence the quality of government performance found a cogent explanation in the path dependence model. One of the most important assumptions of that analytical framework is that because policy environments are self-reinforcing, governments can be captives of unsatisfactory public pro­grams and find it hard, if not impossible, to change direction.⁹ As Anthony Woodlief argued in 1998, path dependency can explain why some urban governments get “locked into” poor policies. Once a local government implements a garbage collection program or invests in an urban renewal project, the self-reinforcing nature of the policy environment makes it easier to continue the program or project than to revise or terminate it.