The New Institutional Arrangements of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte: progress and challenges

Abstract

The example of Belo Horizonte metropolitan administration is extremely rich for it has gone through different trajectories showing situations that may seem paradoxical. This article aims to provide subsidies to the debate on the challenges and potentials of metropolitan management through the reflection on the dialectical relationship between institutional shape and actors in three strategic historical phases: the first represents the period “PLAMBEL” (Planning of Belo Horizonte), linked to the military government period that needs to be saved from an academic way, the second represents the phase of “AMBEL” (Metropolitan Assembly) hegemony, result of an ideology neolocal soi disant democratizing and a belief radical neo-institutionalist, that did not take into account the correlation strength of the actors involved; the third phase, which is briefly examined, discussed the process of intergovernmental relations that resulted in the political-institutional framework that currently supports the shared management in the metropolitan  area of Belo Horizonte (RMBH), supervised by the State of Minas Gerais and strongly supported  by the city of Belo Horizonte, which made it possible to conclude a new agreement with the  possibility of enabling a more dynamic metropolitan management.