The role of mobile policies in coalition building : the Barcelona model as coalition magnet in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro (1989-1996)

Research on policy mobility has tended to focus on what moves (e.g. policy models, templates) and who moves them (e.g. consultants, international organizations) with less attention paid to the relational politics of grounding dominant ideas in local policy making. The ‘demand side’ at the end of the mobilization process (e.g. local authorities and policy actors) is usually depicted as passive or as having stable interests. This assumption is problematic as it can reinforce taken for granted power asymmetries in the flow of urban policy ideas, particularly in cases where cities in the Global North are presented as ‘exporting sites’ for a Global South audience of ‘importing sites’. Drawing on the concept of policy ideas as ‘coalition magnets’ from policy studies, this paper demonstrates how local policies are relationally produced by cosmopolitan policy actors on the ‘demand side’ who strategically mobilize circulating ideas as a tool for coalition building. We provide a relational comparative study of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro’s policy processes and urban outcomes in mobilizing the Barcelona model of urban regeneration and strategic planning drawing on evidence from interviews, document analysis, and the biographies of key policy actors. It demonstrates the strategic importance of mobile policies for emerging political actors who employ them as a ‘coalition magnet’ to build support for their governments.