Competitive Transnational Diffusion of Protest Control Repertoires in Democracies: The Brazilian Case (2013-2017)

The paper addresses processes of strategic interaction between human rights movements and the State, focusing on reciprocal patterns of protest control repertoires´diffusion –, a set of conceptions of public security and order, legal apparatus and models of policing (doctrines, practices, technologies, strategies and tactics). In democracies, political, legal, and symbolic definitions of boundaries between public order and civil rights become part of political contention. In the Brazilian case, just as on the eve of the 2014 World Cup a global repressive repertoire was diffused through the law and order state coalition, a global responsive repertoire based on human rights norms and practices was also diffused through the coalition of Brazilian and Latin American human rights organizations, which was formed during the protests in the 2010s. The term competitive transnational diffusion is forged to analytically describe this simultaneous diffusion in tactical adaptation and innovation processes of contentious and institutional repertoires. The paper maps: i) timing and conditions for diffusion (national/international and poltical/relational opportunities); ii) the national and international actors of diffusion; iii) what was diffused (ideas, norms, laws, policies, practices); iv) how it was diffused (pathways, spaces and mechanisms); v) effects of diffusion on protest control policies and civil rights activism in Brazil. The research combines sources and data (newspapers, official and activist documents, and in-depth interviews). It contributes to the study of contentious politics in democracies in three ways. First, it broadens the analytical scope through the theoretical and empirical synthesis of studies on diffusion of social control policies and contentious repertoires. Second, it identifies the emergence of a new field of political contention on human rights in contemporary democracies in reaction to repressive responses to protests. Third, it broadens the geographical scope of the research agenda from established democracies to Latin American democracies.