Policy Stability without Policy: The Battle over Same-Sex Partnership Recognition in Brazil

Schulenberg, Shawn

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1451907

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Brazil's LGBTQ policies and politics have received growing attention from scholars focusing on parties as tools to enable and advance LGBTQ rights via legislative procedures in the national Congress (Marsiaj, 2006;Santos, 2016;Schulenberg, 2009). However, as noted by scholars, conservative religious parliamentarians in the national Congress have been the primary opponents blocking LGBTQ bills during the democratic period (Santos & de Melo, 2018).…”

Section: Institutional Factors Determining the Legislative Impassementioning

confidence: 99%

The Anti-Homophobia Bill (PLC 122) in Brazil: Conspiracies and Conflicts Between the Constitution and the Bible

Galego

2022

PaG

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Despite the growing violence against LGBTQ people nationwide, the National Congress of Brazil has failed to pass any legislation protecting LGBTQ rights. The executive and judiciary have compensated for this legislative gap by protecting LGBTQ rights through palliative LGBTQ policies. By historically analyzing the anti-homophobia bill PLC 122 and presenting a discourse analysis of ten anti-LGBTQ rights bills, as well as the results of semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the billing process (2001–2021), this article seeks to unpack why and how the anti-homophobia bill was never approved in Congress. In part, Congress’ delay in approving the anti-homophobia bill is due to conservative opposition, a weak coalition between the executive and legislative branches of government, and the fact that more religious parliamentarians are represented in politics. As a result, LGBTQ bills introduced to Congress have become political weapons used by conservative and fundamentalist religious politicians as part of electoral campaign strategies. The anti-homophobia bill has opened a political window where anti-LGBTQ discourses sustain conservative politics and enforce the alliance between religion and politics. Moreover, the bill has strengthened the religious and conservative discourse, policy manipulation and the emergence of conspiracy theories—framing the bill as “opposing God’s people” and as constraining the freedom of religion and spreading fear of pastors and priests being jailed. The main conclusion is that policy and political discourses oscillate between making decisions according to the Constitution or the Bible, creating constraints and opportunities for the approval of the LGBTQ bill in the Brazilian Congress.

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Section: Institutional Factors Determining the Legislative Impassementioning

confidence: 99%

The Anti-Homophobia Bill (PLC 122) in Brazil: Conspiracies and Conflicts Between the Constitution and the Bible

Galego

2022

PaG

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“…Schulenberg (2009) points out in her analysis of the same-sex marriage bill in Brazil that the country offers policy stability without a policy for LGBTQ people. She argues that institutional factors influence this unique and contradictory policy environment in Brazil, with solid opposition by conservative and religious fundamentalist parliamentarians who have blocked the approval of the LGBTQ bill in Congress (Schulenberg, 2009). Galego (2022b) draws a similar conclusion by analyzing patterns of conspiracy theories strengthening the religious opposition in the House, especially after the judicial decision to criminalize LGBTphobia in 2019.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over more than 35 years of redemocratization in Brazil, and despite many bills submitted to Congress, the national legislature has failed to pass legislation on LGBTQ rights (Galego, 2022a; Marsiaj, 2006; Santos, 2016). Schulenberg (2009) points out in her analysis of the same‐sex marriage bill in Brazil that the country offers policy stability without a policy for LGBTQ people. She argues that institutional factors influence this unique and contradictory policy environment in Brazil, with solid opposition by conservative and religious fundamentalist parliamentarians who have blocked the approval of the LGBTQ bill in Congress (Schulenberg, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brazil's LGBTQ public policy: A Potemkin policy?

Galego

2023

Latin American Policy

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Although there are many frameworks of policy change analysis, little attention has been paid to policy manipulation, especially policies related to the community of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). This article develops a framework to fill this gap; it analyzes the process of policy manipulation by drawing on the metaphor of the Potemkin village, referring to the creation of a façade to suggest advances or progress to external observers. These Potemkin features have implications for informing a case study of Brazil's LGBTQ and human rights policies. Through content analysis of federal executive policy outputs, and an analysis of changes made by political elites in instruments, ideas, and actors over 20 rights‐based LGBTQ policies adopted in Brazil between 1996 and 2020, the article finds evidence that Brazil's LGBTQ policy is a Potemkin one.

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“…In lieu of measuring the overall wealth of the LGBT rights organizations within each country, we will track the number of reported movements in each country for each year studied, and examine whether consolidation has taken place. The act of consolidation can serve as a stand-in for the overall resource mobilization and professionalism of a country's social movement groups, even if it is an indirect or imperfect measure (Schulenberg, 2010;Piatti-Crocker, 2010;Schulenberg, 2012). The main rationale for this stems from the fact that groups that have formed from the splicing of previously splintered movements will likely have had more time to develop and will thus be more sophisticated on the whole.…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conventional wisdom holds that left-leaning parties should prove more amenable to LGBT rights and otherwise relatively liberal positions on social issues generally, while the converse should be true of right-leaning parties. Initial research on the matter in South American countries (Brown, 2002;Frasca, 2005;Merentes, 2008;Piatti-Crocker, 2010;Schulenberg, 2010) suggests that this is not necessarily the case. The socialist governments of Venezuela and Bolivia have seen minimal support or prioritization of…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Another Kind of Pink Tide? An Investigation into the Rapid Expansion of LGBT Rights in Latin America

Petkus¹

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Within the past two decades or so, the South American region has seen a remarkable rise in the enactment of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights-affirming policies. This trend is particularly notable given the dearth of such progress in the rest of the developing world. As such, this study aims to contribute to the small but rapidly growing body of literature on the subject. In particular, I aim to determine which factors are most explanatory of when and why countries will enactLGBT rights policies and why a disparity exists across the region. The first systematic study of its kind, findings suggest that social movements, the language of a state's constitution, and religious trends are most influential in this regard. Noting the limitations of the research, I proceed to suggest possible future research directions.

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Policy Stability without Policy: The Battle over Same-Sex Partnership Recognition in Brazil

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

The Anti-Homophobia Bill (PLC 122) in Brazil: Conspiracies and Conflicts Between the Constitution and the Bible

The Anti-Homophobia Bill (PLC 122) in Brazil: Conspiracies and Conflicts Between the Constitution and the Bible

Brazil's LGBTQ public policy: A Potemkin policy?

Another Kind of Pink Tide? An Investigation into the Rapid Expansion of LGBT Rights in Latin America

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