The Territory as Space for Collective Action: Paradoxes and Potentialities of the ‘Strategic Game of Actors’ in Territorial Planning in Portugal

Abstract

This essay focuses on the new forms of collective action and the rules of the 'strategic game of actors' in a territorial planning context. Looking for answers to these questions, I link three kinds of empirical materials: the evolution of electoral participation and associational involvement of the Portuguese; the different forms of intervention of stakeholders, organizations in strategic planning processes; and, finally, I present a typology that seeks to interrogate the different logics of social action of the different kinds of actors. The essay concludes that the 'new planning' calls for new forms of collective action, but these new forms can give rise, simultaneously, to forms of alienation, manipulation or emancipation.