Practices of Exception in Urban Governance: Reconfiguring Power Inside the State

Supported on the analysis of a case study from Portugal (the Polis Programme), the article analyses the use of legal practices of exception in urban governance to explore the on-going reconfiguration of relationships within the state. A growing number of studies address how practices of exception shape state-society relationships, but little attention has been paid to how they shape the relationships among those governing while eliciting antagonisms from dissenting state actors. Findings suggest that legal practices of exception reconfigure the relationships within the state because, by default, they seek to redefine the field of government through a redistribution of power. The article illustrates different ways in which state actors attempt to resist practices of exception in everyday practice and concludes with a discussion of three paradoxes of their use in urban governance. The article reasserts the relevance of studying the role of the law and of the bureaucracy in urban governance.