• * An extended version of this paper was published in RCCS 77 (June 2007).

1Over the past decades, the importance attached by the social sciences to territorial scenarios, i.e. infra-national spaces, can be explained, among other factors, by the circumstances which have weakened, at least since the 1960s, the predominance of “central” authorities and functions over the “periphery.” By designing new forms of political organisation and a new face for the State, such circumstances led the centre-periphery scheme to lose the relevance that had previously been attached to it, as the “centre,” its jurisdiction and its elites experienced a reduction in their authority over the periphery.

• 1 These are civil society social and political practices that lead it to withdraw the social sphere f (...)

2These were years of decisive change. They saw the emergence of the crisis of the State and the waning of Fordism, the logics of “detotalisation” (Bayart, 1985)1 and the decline of traditional decision-making pyramids, “networking” and the superimposing of “governance” practices on governmental authority over social agents and sectors. In addition, the contradictory flows of globalisation and of “flexible” capitalism changed the socio-economic profile of our societies and gave rise to considerable revision of the principles of social analysis. Versions of “structuration” (Giddens), of methodological individualism and, in the area of political science, of sociological neo-institutionalism (Hall and Taylor, 1997), manifest in multiple approaches and concepts like “networks,” “configuration,” “social capital” or the “game of actors,” relativised previous functionalist and holistic views. The goal was to draw methodologies closer to individuals’ beliefs, representations, symbols and values, but also to capture their rationality “in action,” in the pragmatic appropriation of circumstances. This conferred unprecedented importance on territories, seen as privileged sites for culture formation and management of interests, for mobilising networks and carrying out projects, for strategic action and institutional regulation – in other words, for confrontation and compromise between distinct versions of power and development.

• 2 The relation between centre and periphery, in particular, was addressed from the viewpoint of the d (...)
• 3 The “local” expression of facts has been related to a specific cartography, that of contextual vari (...)

3Interest then focused on the way historical-geographical conditions produce singularities and render phenomena complex.2 Systemic determinisms, functional imperatives, abstract precepts for evaluation of facts, all these lost significance. They were replaced by attention to the lived, experienced and imagined reality, where individuals make sense of experience and reconfigure it in more formal or universal ways. In showing how each society makes its own construction of the economic and the political, emphasis was given to the specific configurations of actors, norms, institutions and leaders emerging from the territories. The idea is that, quite as important as the structures and rationalities that rule over the spaces, are the worlds experienced, biographical trajectories, collective memory, relational networks, the institutions and leaders rooted in them, i.e. the concrete experiences and worlds which emerge whenever we see human constructs in their specificity.3

• 4 The times when the State, by negotiating with industrial groups, piloted jobs towards distressed ar (...)

5In practice, the crisis of the Keynesian programme and the collapse of public finances restricted State intervention. Structural adjustment programmes in developing countries and the demands of budget containment in Europe, with repercussions on the difficulty experienced by governments in ensuring full employment in different regions, left many territories without support and dependent on favourable insertion into global markets.4 The pressures of a competitive economy based on innovation and knowledge, combined with the State’s difficulties in maintaining mechanisms for correcting territorial asymmetries, began to shape the future of cities and regions, introducing the idea of interterritorial competition.

• 5 The combination of cultural and institutional factors, of collective memory and political regulatio (...)

6The paradigm of local development replaced centralised planning. Development from “below” emphasised the functionalities and endogenous resources of the territories. The role of conventions and institutions, both public and private, as well as the importance of networks of territorial actors were used to explain the degree of success with which the economies of countries and regions participated in the global flows.5 The geography of “costs” and “stocks of factors” gave way to that of “organisations” and quality of institutions (Veltz, 2002: 12), in a world economy where competition now involved, not simply products, but ways of organising society and social systems (Pecqueur, 2000).

• 6 In this sense, the materialisation of activities in space, the economic landscape, may be “the fore (...)

7Of course, the profusion of analyses on “territorial” issues gave rise to multiple theories that made the territory as a category problematic and fluid. Viewed either as history and culture rooted in a space, or as a mere response to “external” opportunities and constraints (in the sense of being constructed by networks which activate territorial responses at any given moment, as a result of specific strategies aimed at certain interlocutors), the territory can also be viewed as the jurisdictional framework of a concrete body (municipalities, administrative regions, urban or metropolitan communities), the space of functional articulation of certain logics and powers (industrial districts, metropolitan areas), or simply as floating, unstable, virtual matter. The fact is that the “new political economy” and economic sociology have shown that economies emerged from the crisis of the Keynesian models relying on institutional and cultural factors of a local and national nature. This gave analytical substance to the territory – as a space of decision-making and production, culture and the market, networks and institutions. Although highlighting the multiple paths towards development, these approaches present it essentially as the result of territorially situated dynamics. This means that development reveals a deep “contextual dependence,” being anchored in the social, political and cultural realities of certain spaces. Development processes will thus occur in spaces where some collective efficacy emerges, stemming from primarily endogenous and shared features.6

• 7 Supervision of macro-economic equilibria, development planning, organising societal interaction.
• 8 For Mayntz (1993: 13), failures in public authority can be grouped into four regulation problems: t (...)

9These factors, acting on public sectors and their policies, have made for special turbulence over the past decades. They convey not just the disappearance of the post-war world of clear orientations,7 depriving States of their capacity to pilot society, but also the intensification of failures in government itself (Mayntz, 1993), which have amplified public administrations’ difficulties in regulating and enforcing their legitimacy.8 In practice, as public action displayed successive failings, the pressure to “liberate” society’s capacity for self-regulation grew, expressing the resistance of many sectors vis-à-vis the State. Groups and networks interested in public policies made their presence felt, undoing State monopolies and advocating private management of the public sphere.

• 9 Robust financial control of management, inter-sector, inter-network and inter-public service compet (...)
• 10 Throughout Europe, similar mechanisms for administrative reform have been put in place. Aiming at r (...)

10To facilitate this, the principles of capitalist microeconomics are transferred to the State, with the new public management promoting a “minimal state,” obeying criteria of competitiveness and guided by self-organising networks (Rhodes, 1997). The migration of business management into the State means the takeover of public action by corporate governance rules.9 This is passed off as modernisation, when very often it is nothing but the mere transformation of public administration bodies into market entities.10 In the end, “rational choice” extends into every domain, toning down, notably, the differences between the public and the private.

• 11 Lorrain (2004: 165) argues that elected officials have given way to experts, just as in the world o (...)

16Hence the transfer of decision-making to specialised networks, to which the massive instrumentation of public policies has been bringing comfort (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2005). Mechanisms for control and discipline, calculating and estimating, technical evaluation and codification of “governability” (Foucault) become widespread, entailing not just the “depoliticisation” of government activity – the issues of legitimacy and power are shed in favour of “problem solving” – but also the prominence of networks of experts without whom nothing seems to work.11. Comprising “intimates” or “partners” whose status is defined by possession of specific types of knowledge, converging interests or a common, inter-peer past, such networks can be endowed with transparency and internal consistency. That is to say, they can be legible and open to participation from “within,” but they tend to prove opaque to the outside, lacking transparency, openness or codification compatible with other sectors, networks, and the public at large (Papadopoulos, 1995). At the end of the spectrum, important decisions may fall under the aegis of technocracies that are impermeable to public scrutiny, following “the tendency to hand over the debate to those who have the reputation of possessing modern skills and know-how” (Gaudin, 1995: 55). More often, decision-making relies only on agents selected because they are specialists or representatives of interests who are legitimised to intervene in public policy. Whatever the case may be, they always reflect the weight of the “local orders” (Friedberg, 1993) established by networks, fragmenting the State and society to such an extent that they can become a major risk for citizenship and for democracy. As Rouban (1999: 2) states, “networks are not necessarily democratic, and more often create communities than they do citizens.”

• 12 Anglo-Saxon theory has shown how, in public action, all linearity can be suppressed, with procedure (...)

17It therefore comes as no surprise that these complex and unstable universes – peopled by competitive agents, and in which the former “certainties structured” by State norms give way to “non-structured uncertainties” (Duran and Thoenig, 1996) in a vaguely organised anarchy – introduce profound deficits in notions of the common good. The “general interest” becomes controversial, as the idea of a broadly encompassing interest loses credibility. Self-organised groups or networks now intervene in the definition of the “general interest,” conditioning deliberations negotiated with them. The result is that between networks and interests, on one side, and normatively oriented institutions, on the other, the space for possibilities, controversies and competition has become magnified. Opportunities for cooperation, convergent views, the integration of goals between the public and the private, the state apparatus and networks, may emerge, as stressed by optimistic versions of “governance.” Nevertheless, zones of friction and confrontation are more obvious. Understanding and compromises may appear, but almost always on sectoral issues, under tension and on the brink of stalemate. This means also that state authorities, economic forces and associations become involved in a permanent dispute in which public accountability and legibility tend to blur.12 Public policies have come to be based on explanations of the “‘communalisation’ type, which insist on the fabrication of socially and/or geographically restricted (to certain groups and/or certain territories) compromises, on compromises between levels of management – local, national and international – as well as on agreements achieved through the fabrication of common referents, or, in other words, shared cognitive senses” (Massardier, 2003: 64).

• 13 The purpose is to convert the citizen into “the user, supported or excluded, or some such term that (...)

19Accordingly, the intention of building more just and coherent societies vanishes, as ongoing changes in the practice of citizenship attest. The favouring of the economic and social aspects of citizenship transforms growing strata of the population into producers-consumers of social services, that is, providers-beneficiaries deprived of political citizenship proper (Schnapper, 1994b: 15). The fragmentation of the State into policies and sectors managed on the basis of “expertise” leads therefore to an equally fragmented view of the citizen. This highlights the economically and socially assigned condition of each person – that of consumer of policies manufactured by experts, rather than that of someone integrated in a territory, to be viewed under the prism of his/her capability as regards politics, his/her attachments or identity.13.

• 14 “Proximity” has become the magic formula, the totem-word or new fetish of the political world (Lefe (...)

22This option has been disseminated by successive instruments which have given it material form and made it irreversible. The purpose of decentralisation is to modernise public action and renew the legitimacy of public authorities. Indeed, this has been the driving force behind many reforms in the European political systems in the past decades, committed as they are to recovering government authority, reconciling citizens with their representatives and rebuilding social ties. The virtues attributed to proximity contexts are expected to bring greater transparency and accountability to public decision-making, as well as greater speed on the part of the ruling class in responding to people’s problems, meeting their needs of territorial identification and of a more participatory democracy, open to civil society.14

• 15 Authors who have addressed “multi-level governance” highlight the structure of opportunities that E (...)
• 16 Analysis shows that this was never the case. Rather, it reveals the extent to which peripheral “for (...)

23In addition, proximity responds to a European Union mobilised around principles such as subsidiarity and participation, which are at the operational core of its programmes. In this sense, Europe, too, has favoured the movement of “territorialisation of public problems, which cannot be uniformly addressed at central level and whose issues have to be considered and formulated on a case by case basis by proximity actors” (Mabileau, 1997: 357).15 This led to the establishment, in several countries, of a more “intergovernmental” framework involving centres and peripheries, placing on a more balanced plane – characterised by greater dialogue and mutual respect – relations until then viewed as being simply of a hierarchical nature or of dependence of peripheral agents vis-à-vis central directives.16

• 17 As argued by Le Galès (1998: 231), Europe’s nation-states have lost part of their ability to regula (...)

24Thus, if on the one hand the market, individualism and social complexity force the State to draw back, on the other, conditions have been created for intermediate territories, such as cities and regions, to be able to emerge as an alternative stage for integrating actors, organising forces and regulating socio-political realities.17 Governability can thus be renewed by drawing on the capacity for reflection and action mobilised by different actors in territories, where interests are more tangible and alternative forms of public action may be promoted. Public-private partnerships, infrastructure management involving technical personnel, politicians and public service beneficiaries, extensive harmonisation of different perspectives and consultation of populations, all this within frames of flexible decision-making, appear to be the new ways of “manufacturing” the political discernible in the territories.

• 18 This type of consideration is based on the premise that the field of possibilities, institutional l (...)

25To the extent that public and private organisations have, in certain places, gained shape and coherence, forming configurations of actors driven by territorialised programmes, “collective territorial actors” of an urban or regional nature may emerge, together with the redefining of the populations’ identities and collective meanings. This occurs in a context in which the European dimension is fundamental, given the recognition of territorial ambitions by the EU (Jeffery, 1997) and its normative influence on member States, pressuring them to adopt a favourable attitude towards subsidiarity and decentralised administration.18 Therefore, the networks of actors, the strategies and interests that interfere in public policies, despite their disaggregated, polycentric and even chaotic nature, can become more coordinated in territorial scenarios. The territory will give rise to a new form of constructing the political, superimposing “transversal,” “concerted,” “cooperative,” “co-produced” and “hybrid” modes of organisation over state and professional sector apparatuses. In more diffuse or integrated ways, city and regional government agents will forge modes of strategic action inserted in “project” dynamics, “contract” logics, “public-private partnership,” local identities. This will create an alternative to the sectoral, fragmented and technocratic treatment of issues (social exclusion, sustainable development, public transport, cultural activities, etc.): a transversal, global approach, unified by a territorial perimeter which is favourable to cooperation. As Donzelet and Estèbe state, “the territory joins together in concrete terms that which sectorialisation separates in the abstract” (1994: 22-23).

• 19 The case of Atlanta, described in Clarence Stone’s work, is a case in point.

29Among this set of notions, let us consider that of “urban regime.” Based on the systems of cooperation which, in certain cities,19 bring together actors from the economic and political arenas, cultural associations and universities, it points to the possibility of a coherent and “fair” governability in those complex worlds which are today’s large cities. It speaks of collective action (i.e. “capacity to govern”) in the territory, referring notably to the informal arrangements among very different categories of actors who are willing to negotiate and fashion common goals, as well as share their resources in order to accomplish them. This means that, in urban spaces, coalitions can be formed among diversified actors, devoted to partnerships and joint action. This gives cities political capacity and considerable governing autonomy. Beyond institutional, sectoral or personal cleavages, cooperation and trust systems arise, interconnecting very different partners. And if cooperation and loyalty must allow everyone to derive material and short-term benefits from the political “game,” nonetheless they also point to lengthy processes of construction and learning as to the most desirable modalities of action, where collective problems are handled with shared norms and procedures, implying the development of a culture of compromise among the different segments of local forces.

• 20 Even if the gains obtained from projects benefit some more than others, favouring the economic elit (...)
• 21 Territorial analysis partakes of that logic of the “project” with which we now assess ways of being (...)

30Urban projects, adopted as unifying goals, can provide a fundamental impetus to this.20 And they illustrate the broader use now made of the notion of “project,” it, too, with its “territorial” aspect – precisely that of the “project” as a gauge of the potentialities of collective action in territories.21

• 22 Projects express themselves, for instance, in urban political operations that articulate a prospect (...)

32According to this view, projects are a means of creating unity of action in atomised systems, prompting forms of cooperation which would otherwise not occur. On the other hand, when “project” and “governance” are combined in territories, the assumption is that there is some capacity for self-government at the urban or regional level, bringing together forces and interests coming from distinct provenances. That is to say, one does not think so much in terms of “concrete action systems” (Friedberg, 1993) – which are more or less volatile, set up by outside action and kept in place simply for certain initiatives or goals – as in terms of a dynamic that is intrinsic to territories, that transmutes them into “collective actors” of some durability. Territories, then, appear as “contexts that have their own agenda, capacity for action and modes of regulation: territories that are capable of representing themselves as societies and collective actors acting in a context of territorial competition” (Pinson, 2002: 234).22

• 23 These are all aspects which the political establishment is in no condition to ensure, and it may ev (...)

34For this reason, actors’ cooperation and legitimation in projects should not depend on or be centred around local institutions and politicians. The argument is that, in a real “project” dynamic, cooperation and mutual trust between participants emerge from a labour of densification of horizontal relations, producing identities and work teams which institute the territory as a sui generis political space. This occurs, naturally, in the sphere of public intervention, since it is the latter that provides the incentive for, and benefits from, the fact that the parties involved in “governance” feel the need to take “a view of the general interest that is accepted by others,” accommodating the agreements established on the basis of projects or on “the definition of ends that are of common interest” (Marcou, 1997: 18). Above all, “projects” make an inventory of the relational, material and cognitive local resources, assessing the extent to which they are activated in the construction of structures for action based on interactions and on territorial identity. The ability to act collectively, which projects express, must also be met by particular modes of regulation, shared representations of the future, challenges and controversies recognised as important, and a degree of cognitive harmonisation, endowing cities with the traits of a cultural and political system. This factor is all the more important as international competition between territories is in large measure decided according to the cohesion displayed by their systems of actors – in their ability to build new forms of bargaining, relations of trust and consensus transcending party, hierarchy or interest-based lines, bypassing politicised procedures in favour of broad-based social mobilisation rooted in civil society. Only thus can stability be brought to the cooperative game among the actors, leading them to discover common interests and feelings of belonging, to invest in dialogue and in interdependence, in reciprocity and common identity, territorialising their strategies, especially in economic terms.23

• 24 Problem-solving rules and principles will gain significance in a given context, irrespective of whe (...)

36Finally, the notion of “common good as territorial construct” (Lascoumes and Le Bourhis, 1998) is all the more applicable as the differentiation of the stages on which public policies are played out appeals to modes of management that are less standardised and more specific to each place. The idea is that “discussion fora” in the territories may increasingly give rise to rules for framing agents and interventions in the field, creating joint-work habits that will lead to valid agreements on development and problem-solving. To speak of the “common good” as a territorial construct is to say that the interplay of identities, interests and oppositions in territories, very often resulting in competitive “jousts,” can be resolved by mutual learning, favoured by interactions that lead to the adjusting of interests and to the reciprocal accommodation of the identities of those involved. Since interests and identities are not immutable, oppositions and clashes may represent an opportunity for interchange, teaching players how to deal, in a positive manner, with the initial antagonisms. What is important is that disagreements be subjected to procedures which can give rise to new perceptions of each actor’s initial interests and positions, so that a sufficiently operational understanding of the general territorial interest can be reached. Thus, it is argued that conditions obtain in the territories to set up frameworks for adjusting competing identities and interests – even without formal devices or substantive goals determining interactions a priori – where the power of the State is reduced, at best, to “convening” the actors (Calame and Talmant, 1997; Ruivo, 2000b).24

• 25 On one side, there is the pragmatism of declared purposes and the malleability of procedures, makin (...)

37The widespread conviction is that the technicist model which the political-administrative system grew accustomed to will be counterbalanced by a deliberatory model, characterised by the permanent adjusting of heterogeneous interests, the insertion of new actors in decision-making and the possibility of successively adapting, for a given territory, the goals agreed upon and the means to achieve them. That is to say, a model grounded in procedural policies defining interaction frames, where at each step the search for the common “territorial” interest is reactivated. What is essential is the setting up of territorial devices that ensure “organised interactions, modes of joint work, the formulation of collective agreements. Whereas classic public action presupposes the prior definition of the ‘general interest’, procedural action builds in stages a localised ‘common good’ that ensures the coherence and legitimacy of decisions” (Lascoumes and Le Bourhis, 1998: 40).25 Institutionalising these new ways of doing politics will entail the valorising of the agreements reached, their use as references for the future and the possibility of “exporting” the common good thereby achieved to territories exhibiting similar problems.

• 26 Communication, interaction, negotiation between actors in political and social fields produce the t (...)

38In sum, such an understanding of the “local” presents it as a space for harmonisation, negotiation, projects, resulting in “a concept of territory as a political construct based on interactions” (Autès, 2001: 21). The territory, conceived as a “project territory” through the work of the actors who decide to do something in cooperation, will thus re-establish the essence of the political: building something in common.26

• 27 Lascoumes and Le Bourhis had already pointed to the obstacles to deliberatory practices inherent in (...)
• 28 The author notes that “‘subsidiarity’ continues to be considered in derogatory terms – a system of (...)

41In turn, the territorialisation of public action in France has been riddled with contradictions, at every turn mitigated by the “return of the State” and by corporative logics, as well as the personal control wielded by local elected officials over processes supposed to provide greater openness, participation, transparency and supra-municipal articulation of local policies.27 In a country where the general interest is still understood as being consubstantial with the action of the State, according to Mérieux (2005), “subsidiarity” remains the exception, and it is difficult to combine the common interest with handing over to actors other than the State the means to produce public action at local level.28 For example, contractualising policies between government and local authorities appear to many to be reviving centralisation and unequal power relations between the State and local government, representing yet another opportunity to impose the centre’s conditions on local “partners.” Under the guise of negotiations between parties on an equal footing, there is a return to old imbalances, with the national referents and interests still overriding local priorities and referents.

• 29 An entire school of interpretation insists on “the limits of the phenomenon, the effects of legitim (...)
• 30 This gave rise to veritable mediation and participation professionals (Jouve, 2005), a new kind of (...)

44This is undoubtedly yet another sphere where the historical weight of national cultures is decisive (Heinelt, 2002). Nothing in fact can ensure that a fair and judicious selection of participants, their mutual trust and understanding, or the change in notions of citizenship required by participatory dynamics will occur. Besides, many studies prove that traditional mediation organisations (political parties and trade unions, churches, lobbies) always find ways of framing debates and leading participatory processes. Popular strata, inhibited by multiple disadvantages, tend to remain absent, and the mobilisation of the middle classes usually occurs only to safeguard privileges and individual well-being.29. In the case of French cities, once again the procedures of participatory democracy appear, over time, to have consolidated the power of the usual representative figures (Caillosse, 1999), especially the mayors. The needs of political socialisation and of internalising the rules of the game set down by politicians, the asymmetries in information between social groups, the degree of expertise required for many debates, do not simply drive away those whose resources are weaker, but have reinforced local government leaders’ capacity to co-opt civil society’s “legitimate representatives.”30

• 31 With decentralisation, the “mayoral” model was reinforced, giving the chief executive “an unprecede (...)

45For these reasons, it comes as no surprise to find, for the French context, accounts of the opacity, muddle, disarticulation between levels of intervention, monopolisation and personalisation of power, the undermining of participatory democracy and the depletion of deliberatory assemblies, contempt for transparency and the politicising of projects, the reinforcing of rural/urban asymmetries and the “return of the State,” which decentralisation was able to trigger, protect or establish. Mabileau (1997) concludes that in no other democratic country is the monopolistic power of local authorities so entrenched as in France. The possibilities of accessing central power agencies and the rules of “contact democracy,” coupled lately with communication and image strategies, as well as prerogatives regarding the coordination of the local institutions that have been created, have turned municipal leaders into major “game masters.”31 Where Mény (1992) speaks of a “republic of fiefdoms,” others see the contradictory effect of decentralisation and of the “perverting of local democracy” in a regime of new feudal lords, so entrenched in decentralised France (Hureaux, 2004).

• 32 The position taken recently by the National Local Government Association with regard to the possibi (...)

46This analysis may be applicable to other countries of the “South,” should there be confirmation that local administration systems in Southern Europe have adhered very little to the new public management and remain faithful to more classic practices (John, 2001). We know that in Portugal advances in decentralisation have been weak. Regionalisation and the establishment of successful metropolitan institutions having failed, the periphery remains under the sway of the “paradigm of continuous and interminable centralisation” (Monteiro, 1996: 22). Nevertheless, similarities with the diagnosis presented above are undeniable. This is both because any attempt at organisation in territorial contexts is constrained by strict dependence on the centre (in political, administrative, strategic and financial terms), and because, in a democracy characterised by the concentration of power in the hands of local government leaders, links between the centre and the territories continue to be made through more personalised channels, and the influence of elected assemblies and of socially and politically heterogeneous groups is residual. Privilege is granted to the mayor’s network of collaborators, and institutions or opinions of a more public nature are sidelined, if not infrequently alienated (Ruivo and Francisco, 1998/1999). Besides, in a social worlds dominated by personal forms of interaction, it is the longevity in office of local government officials which assures the forms of integration and continuity deemed necessary, rather than some “territorial” culture of managing projects or seeking the common good based on multi-participated frameworks.32 Cooperation, “pertinent” mobilisation, structures of trust, “strategy” and local identity, in sum, the attributes of so-called “social capital,” as well as current notions of “governance” and “project,” have to be viewed as dependent on the attributes of certain leaders – namely those with privileged links with different State sectors or services – around whom relational networks are organised with a view to enjoying the opportunities offered by public policies. It will therefore make little sense to search, in local universes in Portugal, for the kind of institutional efficacy and strategic action which history, culture, the global economy or decentralisation have driven forward in other contexts, building relations of trust and collective action among different societal sectors.

• 33 Access to EU funding crystallised old functional and relational situations of dependence, with EU p (...)

47In the case of Portugal, there is a considerable distance between local government elites, on one side, and the social structure and social partners in general, on the other. The result is that the mayor’s job becomes closed in on itself and on the mayor’s group of associates. In practice, as privileged interlocutors of the State, in a society in which European integration reinforced the dependence on frames of reference and consensus established by the State (Reis, 2004),33 the locally elected mayors are not only the cornerstone of “territorial governance,” but also one of the main obstacles to its evolution.

• 34 Local government exists in a “strategic vacuum” which makes it vulnerable to sundry pressures exert (...)

48It is thus unrealistic to believe that the well-known difficulties experienced by Portuguese society in the autonomous organisation of interests can be overcome at local level, without the State laying down the parameters for relevant action. The rule is the “relative absence of joint dynamics” (Mozzicafreddo et al., 1991: 146), correlative with a presumed culture of passivity on the part of local citizens vis-à-vis local politics (Rocha, 1989) and with the fact that the mayor’s team is at the centre of the interests, rather than the strategies,34 that guide local development. This contributes to that peculiarity of Portuguese society designated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2003) as the “absence of a project,” as it does to the “localist” drift of any attempt at supra-municipal, metropolitan or regional rationalising of the administrative machinery.