Interest groups in Brazil: a new era and its challenges

• Author: Andréa Cristina Oliveira Gozetto,Clive S. Thomas
• Date: 01 November 2014
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1536

■Special Issue Paper

Interest groups in Brazil: a new era and its

challenges

Andréa Cristina Oliveira Gozetto

1

*and Clive S. Thomas

2

1

Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) and Universidade Nove de Julho (UNINOVE), São Paulo, Brazil

2

Foley Institute, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA

This articleprovides general and specifici nsights into Brazil’s developing interest groupsystem. In doing so, it presents a

theoreticalfoundation for understandingthis group activity,past and present. The general insightsof the role of interest

groups under limited politicalparticipation and authoritarian regimes down to the 1980s plusthe period of democracy

since then, providebackground for the specific insightsof the article. The specifics focus on threeaspects of Brazil’s con-

temporary interest group activity: (1) utilizationof a neo-institutional analytical approach forunderstanding the interest

groupenvironment; (2) an analysisof the types of lobbying activitythat takes place in Brazil today, includinga case study;

and (3) an assessment of the level of development of thegroup system by placing it in a comparative perspective with

both advanced liberal democracies and other Latin American countries. The findings show that Brazil is, indeed,

taking on many of the characteristicsof a developed interest group system; but its past, its political culture, its political

economy, and, paradoxically, its new-found status as an international power, work to present several challenges to its

group system andthus to a full democratization ofthe country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Since the early 2000s, Brazil has gained increasing

international attention for a number of reasons. One

is that it has been designated as a BRICS country

(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa),

viewed as the five major emerging economies of the

world. Second, in its quest to secure status among

the world’s leading nations, Brazil hosted a major

international environmental conference in 2012 and

gained an even higher profile by securing the World

Cup for football (soccer) for 2014 and the Olympic

games for 2016 (Rohter, 2012). When, in October

2009, the world learned that Rio de Janeiro had been

selected for the 2016 Olympics, Brazilian President

Luiz Inácio da Silva (popularly known as “Lula”),

commented “our hour has arrived”(Judd, 2011,

p. 8). A third reason is that, in June 2013, Brazil hit

the headlines across the world because of mass

street demonstrations (termed manifestations by

Brazilians). These protests highlighted the political

paradox of the government spending billions of reais

(the Brazilian currency) to get ready for the World

Cup and the Olympicswhile extreme povertypersists

all across the nation (Romero and Neuman, 2013).

The course of the demonstrations offers important

insights into Brazil’s evolving interest group system

and how this relates to the nation’sdeveloping

pluralist democracy. In focusing on the Brazilian in-

terest group system, this article has four purposes:

(1) to provide a general overview of the contempo-

rary group system;(2) to explore the evolvingprocess

of lobbying activity, past andpresent; (3) to present a

theoretical context for understanding the country’s

past and present group activity; and (4) to place

Brazil’s developing group system in a comparative

context.

Interest group activities are often reported in the

Brazilian media,although usually from a sensational-

ist perspective, such as in covering and exposing

corruption. Regarding academic work, as Brazil is

one of the major countries in the region, there has

been more written on its interest group system than

*Correspondence to: Andréa Cristina Oliveira Gozetto, Law

School, Universidade Nove de Julho, Rua Santa Leonor, 159,

São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 05330-030.

E-mail: acjoliveira@gmail.com

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 14 Number 3 pp 212–239 (2014)

Published online 8 September 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1536

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

on most Latin American countries, but to date, no

general scholarly treatment. Although now over

40 years old, Philippe Schmitter ’s (1971), Interest

Conflict and Political Change in Brazil, written during

the military dictatorship, explores the development

of group activity inthe 20th century down to the late

1960s. The book stresses the importance of political

culture and particularly the corporatist element in

Brazilian group development. Although there are

lasting characteristics of interest group activity that

Schmitter identified, the past 40 years has seen many

changes in Brazilian interest group activity. Scholar-

ship has not kept up with these changes, however.

Lack of focus oninterest groups as such means that

there is little literature in English on the Brazilian

group system and only a small amount in Portu-

guese. Furthermore, the w ork that has been

produced is mostly case studies of specific interests,

such as Schneider’s (2004) work on Brazi lian business

associations. Some Brazilian scholars have also pro-

duced case studies (e.g., Araújo, 2008; Baird, 2012;

Mancuso, 2007; Ramos, 2005; Taglialegna, 2005). Un-

derstandably, thesestudies are narrowly focused and

say little, if anything, about the general context and

operation of interest groups in Brazil’s increasingly

pluralist system. Moreover, an interest group

approach is rarely used to understand the nation’s

past or present political system or its policy process.

For instance, neither a recent chapter on what shapes

public policy in Brazil (Alston et al., 2008) nor a book

on Brazilianpolitics (Montero,2005) mentions interest

groups as political organizations or lobbying. As in

other Latin American countries, the focus has been

on social movements, such as the landless movement,

and on elite organizations and cliques or power

groups (as they are referred to in this special issue of

the journal).

Original research and data sources on the Brazilian

interestgroup system are also sparse.

1

Toget a picture

of the group scene,past and present, it is necessaryto

extrapolate from related sources, such as political

histories, case studies of policy-making, and group

and organization websites. This article draws on

these existingsources but mainly on the leadauthor ’s

doctoral work (Oliveira, 2004), her post-doctoral

research, and interviews conducted with political

consultants, group leaders, and government officials

in Brasília and São Paulo in 2012 and 2013. The

article’s methodology combines a descriptive expla-

nation for the general overview and a new institu-

tional approach for analyzing the specific aspects of

the system.

To set the scene, we first provide background on

political and economic development and on contem-

porary government and politics. This is followed by

an explanation of the neo-institutional approach and

its particular relevance to Brazilian interest group

activity. Next comes a description of the interest

group system under restricted political participation

and authoritarian regimes, followed by an overview

of the contemporarygroup system. Then a case study

of the formulation and consideration process of the

Brazilian Biosafety Law (1995–2005) is used to illus-

trate recent developments in group activity. The next

section considers the relationship between the group

system and the democratic process. The conclusion

summarizes the connection between the interest group

system and the political system and brieflycomments

on where Brazil’s group system fits in relation to other

LatinAmericancountries.

FACTORS SHAPING BRAZIL’S INTEREST

GROUP SYSTEM: POLITICAL AND

SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS AND

GOVERNMENT

Skidmore, Smith, and Green (2014) refer to Brazil as

“the awakening giant,”because of its economic

potential and increasing role on the world stage. In

this and other ways, Brazil is different from most

countries in the region (Wiarda, 2014). It accounts for

close to a third of the land area of Latin America and

over half of South America (the southern sub-region

of Latin America) and is the fifth largest country in

the world. At an estimated 200 million in 2014 (World

Population Statistics, 2014), its population also ranks

fifthintheworldandthatyearaccountedforoverhalf

of the 386 million inhabitants of South America and a

third of the estimated 570 million of Latin America

overall. Moreover, Brazil has the largest number of

Roman Catholics of any country in the world. And

in contrast to the rest of Latin America, Brazilians

speak Portuguese—not Spanish.

As to its economy, Brazil is by far the largest in the

region and ranked at seventh in the world in 2012,

just behind the United Kingdom, with the United

States at number 1. By 2016, Brazil is expected to

overtake the UK and France. Brazil has a gross do-

mestic product larger than that of all other South

American countries combined (Judd, 2011, p. 8). The

1

There is, however, a comprehensivestudy of group activity in the

Brazilian Congress currently being conducted, titled “Governance

and Representation: Interests representation in Congress and the

role of interestgroups in the decisionmaking process.”The coordi-

nator of theproject is Manoel DuarteSantos of the Federal Univer-

sity of Minas Gerais (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais). The

results of this study will become available through publications

over the next5 years of so.

Interest groups in Brazil 213

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Public Affairs 14, 212–239 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/pa