GLD would like to welcome you to our Spring 2025 Work-in-Progress Series. This series offers scholars from around the world an opportunity to present and receive feedback on their works in progress, including manuscripts, PAPs, conference papers, articles, etc. This series is virtual and open to anyone to attend; we look forward to seeing you there!
The Spring Work-in-Progress Series will be held on Zoom and in-person in Lilla Skansen at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. If you plan to attend virtually, please register at the link above - you only need to register once and you will have access to the whole series.
Marcela Alonso Ferreira, Sciences Po Paris
City governments in the Global South often confront a dilemma between environmental conservation and secure land rights in informal settlements. This paper examines how this conflict unfolded in Mexico City and São Paulo—two megacities where large informal settlements encroach on protected areas. Drawing on interviews and documents analyzed through process tracing, the study investigates how land regularization policies were made “compatible” with conservation zones over the last twenty years.
While both cities faced similar pressures, policy outcomes diverged. In Mexico City, decision-making was delegated to a multi-actor collegiate body dominated by environmental agencies. Incorporating environmental impact compensation into regularization added complexity and veto points, stagnating implementation. In São Paulo, a coalition of bureaucrats embedded in civil society leveraged partisan alignment to reframe regularization as environmentally oriented—streamlining the assessment of environmental conditions and overriding environmental rules to extend land rights in conservation areas.
To explain these divergent trajectories, the paper develops a framework of institutional intercurrence—the coexistence of overlapping, often conflicting institutional rules. When intercurrence is high and advocates weak or disengaged, implementation stagnates; stronger advocates can successfully navigate or adapt to conflicting rules, adapting or preserving policy aims. Drawing on process tracing, the study uncovers mechanisms through which actors contest, navigate, or adapt to intercurrent institutions.
This research contributes to urban political studies by showing how environmental and social–redistributive policy conflicts emerge over time, how actors navigate or reshape these frictions, and why such tensions—whether resulting in stagnation or policy adaptation—are increasingly central to urban governance in the Anthropocene.
