Between Confrontation and Functionality. Executive Power and Judicial Power around Buenos Aires City’s Housing Policy

Abstract

This article analyzes the process of legal mobilization regarding the policy of housing subsidies by the Buenos Aires City Government. Far from representing cases of structural dispute seeking to modify the public policy –cases that usually catch the attention of the academic environment–, this paper sheds light on a number of individual, recurrent, massive and routine cases that demand a large amount of time and resources from the judicial bureaucracies and from the executive branch. Over more than a decade of dispute, there were established institutional political circuits and adaptative practices between the judicial and executive power. On the one hand, local justice is accessible for individual demands by offering a clear opening on the access to courts for the citizens with low income. On the other hand, by interacting with the executive branch, local justice consolidates itself as a “new-stop window” by providing easy access to the continuity of housing subsidies for that social groups without revising the policy that might enhance substantially the demanding population’s quality life.