Explaining Political Activism in Southern Brazil

Abstract

As the Brazilian public demands more active, direct citizen participation in the policy-making process, more and more new social movements and protest groups emerge. At the same time, Brazilian state political institutions and corporatist structures play a central role in structuring opportunities for civic engagement and activism. Our main argument, rooted in the Brazilian context, is the following: Spurred by state and corporatist structures in Brazilian political life, engagement in organizations of all types-political and nonpolitical-positively affects chances of engaging in political activism in metropolitan southern Brazil. In this context, we also examine the independent influences of education, motivation (interest in politics), gender, and age (the youth generation) on political activism. To address our research concern, we use data from the Brazilian Metropolitan Observatory Survey, carried out in 2006-7 in São Paulo and Porto Alegre (n = 1,536). Considering the strong SUMMER 2011 75 role of the state, we find that engagement in political organizations has a greater impact on political activism than engagement in nonpolitical organizations.Political activism is a key component of democracy and an object of growing interest. Political activism can be defined as citizen action in politics and civic life, such as attending demonstrations, signing petitions, and joining consumer boycotts, among others. As the Brazilian public demands more active, direct citizen participation in the policy-making process, more and more new social movements and protest groups emerge. At the same time, Brazilian state political institutions and corporatist structures play a central role in structuring opportunities for civic engagement and activism (Draibe and Riesco 2007a;O'Donnell 1978;Stepan 1985).The recurrent assumption in the literature is that increasing activism and declining membership in traditional organizations are directly linked (

A Comparative Analysis of Political Confidence in the BRICS Countries

“…As discussed in the last section, active membership in political organizations is always thought to be important for enhancing political confidence. This might be particularly true in the countries where citizens can choose to join a political party more voluntarily, like in Brazil, India, and South Africa – though some researchers have demonstrated the strong role of the state in mobilizing people to engage with political organizations in contemporary Brazil (Côrtes et al ., 2011).…”