Temporal Tactics: Procedural Legitimacy and Exclusion in Brazil’s River Basin Committees

Larissa do Carmo-Inacio, University of Georgia
Diana Graizbord, University of Georgia

How do participatory spaces retain legitimacy even when their democratic mandate is progressively undermined through technocratization, the active exclusion of civil society, and the marginalization of participation? This paper examines this question through a focused revisit to the case of river basin committees in the Federal District, Brazil, during the process leading to the approval of the water use charge plan in 2019. We find that even when institutions appear structurally inclusive, a more subtle and undertheorized dimension of power is at stake: temporal tactics. By temporal tactics we mean the recurring and situated deployment of time and its instruments within participatory processes. We identify four overlapping, non-mutually exclusive tactics. First, sequencing, whereby the order of agenda items structures what can be discussed and when. Second, postponement, through which time is programmatically deployed to defer or stall discussions. Third, the mobilization of urgency, where deadlines are invoked to accelerate deliberation and curtail debate. Finally, windows of opportunity, which determine when it is deemed too early or too late to raise specific claims, based on administrative milestones rather than participatory deliberation. Taken together, we find that temporal tactics can at once undermine participation while appearing to be procedurally legitimate. This paper contributes to the study of democratic legitimacy and proceduralism in participatory spaces, as well as to the sociology of temporal politics.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 173. Tactics of Resistance Against Technocratic and Linguistic Domination