Queering Public Policy: The LGBTQ Movement Influence on Policymaking in Brazil

After the Brazilian democratisation in 1985, the LGBTQ movement deployed several strategies to influence the legislature to approve an LGBTQ bill in Congress but failed. Given the legislative inertia, the LGBTQ movement shifted strategies and venues of activism from legislative to executive and later to the judiciary. The federal executive and judiciary have created palliative policies to compensate for the legislative vacuum and tackle LGBTQ issues, particularly anti-discrimination policies. Therefore, this research raises the question: how does the LGBTQ movement influence policymaking in Brazil? By analysing the anti-homophobia policy process that started in 2001 in Congress and concluded with a judicial decision in 2019, this dissertation seeks to unpack a causal mechanism of influence between the LGBTQ movement and policymaking in one of the most violent countries for LGBTQ people globally. The interplay between social movement, public policy and queer theory helped investigate the movement-policy relationship in a Global South case study. Using data triangulation - document analysis, semi-structured interviews and Court cases analysis -allowed us to identify and analyse actors, events, decision-making, instruments and strategies driving the mechanisms of influence in the policy process. This dissertation comprises five chapters, next to the introduction and conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a literature review on the relationship between social movements and public policy, focusing on strategies to influence. This chapter relies on a model to search for empirical evidence to demonstrate the movement-policy relationship interactions by combining two existing analytical models: the effects model and the political mediation model. Furthermore, the chapter provides an expanded repertoire of strategies deployed by social movements to influence policymaking in different policy stages, political and contextual conditions. Chapter 3 presents the methodological approach of this research and continues with a description of the analytical framework and the materials and methods used for data collection and processing. The analysis takes an actor-centred perspective and will develop an analytical model by combining critical realism and explaining-outcome process-tracing to unpack a proposed causal mechanism. Finally, this chapter provides an overview of the main sources of information used. The empirical analysis is divided into two chapters. Chapter 4 focuses on the policy change analysis of LGBTQ policy outputs created by the federal executive and adopted in Brazil between 1996 and 2020. This chapter proposes and develops the Potemkin policy model to analyse the manipulation dimension identified from changes in policy instruments, ideas, and actors happening by the political elite's decisions. Chapter 5 shows how the criminalisation of LGBTphobia unfolded by presenting the analysis of events, actors, strategies, and decision-making with a narrative approach detailing the 18-years of the policy process. Furthermore, the case was divided into three acts. The first act occurred in the House of Representatives, where the first anti-homophobia bill (PL 5.003/2001) was submitted in 2001 and approved in 2006. The second act occurred in the Federal Senate between 2006 and 2015, where the anti-homophobia bill suffered a deadlock for deliberate delay from legislators. Finally, the third act occurred in the Supreme Federal Court, between 2012 and 2019, where LGBTphobia was considered a crime under the anti-racism law 7.716/1989. Chapter 6 presents a discussion connecting this dissertation's theoretical and empirical parts. Reflections on key elements of the analytical framework - advancement and limitations - contribute to explaining the findings and future refinement of the movement-policy relationship analysis based on an actor-centred case study. Finally, conclusions are presented based on the analytical and theoretical frameworks developed throughout the dissertation. Furthermore, the study's limitations are presented, and policy recommendations emerging from the empirical analysis are formulated. Finally, possible avenues for future research are outlined.

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Open