Eleonora Pasotti

Cities matter more than ever. In 2007, a major demographic milestone was hit when the earth's population became more urban than rural. By 2050 over 6 billion people, two thirds of humanity, will be living in towns and cities. How cities are governed matters. Cities around the world are becoming increasingly autonomous: with an institutional shift dubbed the "quiet revolution", in the 1980s and 1990s many governments worldwide introduced direct mayoral elections or stronger mayoral powers - often both.

Thus, the dynamics of municipal politics can no longer be reduced to a reflection of national level politics - on the contrary, demographic and institutional trends suggest that national level politics will become increasingly subject to the dynamics borne out of cities. Responding to these developments, Eleonora Pasotti addresses the urgent need for a research agenda in comparative urban politics and studies current challenges in city politics within and across continents.

Pasotti is Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and her first book, Political Branding in Cities: The Decline of Machine Politics in Bogotá, Naples, and Chicago was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, as part of the press' Studies in Comparative Politics. There, Pasotti studies how cities have responded to the decline of mass parties, fiscal crisis and the fall in patronage resources. Her answer is that a new form of governance took hold. Cities subject for decades to entrenched legacies of poor government, corruption, lack of development, social conflict, and political apathy made a transition to brand politics. This new approach to governance broke a vicious cycle of skepticism and inertia and opened the window for a broad set of reforms. Her book explains what this form of governance is; how it works; why and how it came about.

In this book, Pasotti proposes a new conception of politics. Traditionally, politics and markets are considered driven by inherently different logics: consensus maximization and profit maximization. Brand politics presents the contours of a fundamentally different scenario: politics and markets converge in their operational logics as well as their respective relationship to voters and consumers because in both spheres elites increasingly rely on shaping preferences and identities. In markets, brand experts strive to induce experiences for consumers that become part of a product's overall value. Material interest is no longer considered the key to the relationship with customers: by acquiring a product, consumers now aspire to become different people. In politics, brand mayors strive to persuade citizens that by supporting them at the polls, voters will become carriers of values with which voters are eager to be associated. Mayors improve the status of their cities, and thereby augment their personal cachet and voter loyalty. Voters think of themselves as consumers of government services and recast their expectations of government. Voting and buying increasingly become synonymous actions in citizens' primal search for means to express their identities.

Pasotti examines brand politics in a variety of policy contexts: public space; zoning legislation; security; cultural affairs and tourism; budgeting, planning and investment; traffic and transportation; outsourcing and privatizations. The book relies on a broad set of data from various government departments and non-governmental sources. Of particular importance are the historical analyses of city budgets and electoral data across neighborhoods in the three cities. The book also relies on over sixty interviews with top mayors, their closest advisors, and top officials. They offer candid accounts, explaining for example how political negotiation changes with the transition to brand politics.

Pasotti's other research explores additional challenges facing city governments today. She unveils them by studying key policy areas in critical cases across continents. For example, she explores:

*why Neapolitans had such a hard time disposing of their garbage that they shipped it to Germany;

*how Bogota's mayor persuaded rival clans to cooperate in developing the first public transportation system since 1948 with results that have set a model for developing countries everywhere;

*how neighbors in Santiago organized to stop real estate developers from building high-rises in their backyards, despite a political system that privileges private property and markets more than anywhere else in Latin America

*why instead Lima's people have a hard time resisting developers, despite an exceptionally weak property regime

*why Buenos Aires does not control the bus routes within city borders, and wishes it could get rid of at least some subsidies citizens receive from the central government

*why instead in Santiago the integration of public transportation criticized worldwide in 2007 will produce within a decade the best system in Latin America

*how Hamburg is a world leader in city transformation, with an innovative public-private arrangement behind the 157 hectare port conversion that will grow downtown Hamburg by 40%

*how in Sao Paulo submunicipal institutions designed to increase popular participation and the quality of government have ended up as new patronage avenues for high level politicians.

Pasotti holds a BSc in economics and a master's degree in philosophy of the social sciences from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in political science from Columbia University. She has been a Public Policy fellow at Columbia University, a German Marshall Fund of the United States fellow, and a post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University and a visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy.