Why are Brazilians so interested in gun control? Putting the Multiple Streams Framework to the test

Por que os brasileiros estão tão interessados no controle de armas? Testando o modelo de múltiplos fluxos

¿Por qué los brasileños están tan interesados en el control de armas? Poniendo a prueba el marco de corrientes múltiples

Pourquoi les Brésiliens sont-ils si intéressés au contrôle des armes à feu? Mettre le Multiple Streams Framework à l'épreuve

Gun control has been a relevant political issue in Brazil for over twenty years. The first goal of this article is to understand and explain this unusual prominence in the political agenda. The second is the empirical verification of a proposed modification for John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework that may allow a more appropriate application to the Latin American context. Findings suggest that proponents of both gun control and gun liberalization were able to exploit the rise in homicides and their close relations to legislators and presidents to couple the streams together and systematically reintroduce the issue in the agenda. The process was marked by the strong influence of opposing interest groups, whereas political parties and public opinion played a secondary role. In consequence, the agenda-setting process mirrored a political stream that acknowledges how legislatures and political parties are frequently weak in Latin America, while special interests can have a major influence over executives that dominate policymaking.

gun control; Brazil; multiple streams; policy studies; agenda-setting

Resumo

O controle de armas tem sido uma questão política relevante ao Brasil durante mais de 20 anos. O primeiro objetivo deste artigo é compreender e explicar a inusitada importância desse assunto na agenda política. O segundo é a verificação empírica de uma modificação proposta ao marco das correntes múltiplas de John Kingdon para melhorar sua aplicação em contextos latino-americanos. Os resultados sugerem que tanto os partidários de um maior controle de armas como os partidários de sua liberalização foram capazes de explorar o aumento dos homicídios e sua proximidade a legisladores e presidentes para unir as correntes e reintroduzir sistematicamente o assunto na agenda. O processo foi marcado pela forte influência de grupos com interesses opostos, ao mesmo tempo em que os partidos políticos e a opinião pública representavam um rol secundário. Em consequência, o processo de constituição da agenda refletiu uma corrente política que reconhece como as legislaturas e os partidos políticos costumam ser débeis na América Latina, enquanto os grupos de interesses podem ter uma grande influência sobre os poderes executivos que dominam os processos de formulações de políticas.

controle de armas; Brasil; correntes múltiplas; estudo das políticas; configuração da agenda

Resumen

El control de armas ha sido una cuestión política relevante en Brasil durante más de veinte años. El primer objetivo de este artículo es comprender y explicar la inusual importancia de este asunto en la agenda política. El segundo es la verificación empírica de una modificación propuesta al marco de las corrientes múltiples de John Kingdon para mejorar su aplicación en contextos latinoamericanos. Los resultados sugieren que tanto los partidarios de un mayor control de armas como los partidarios de su liberalización, fueron capaces de explotar el aumento de los homicidios y su cercanía a legisladores y presidentes para acoplar las corrientes y reintroducir sistemáticamente el asunto en la agenda. El proceso estuvo marcado por la fuerte influencia de grupos de interés opuestos, mientras que los partidos políticos y la opinión pública solo jugaron un rol secundario. En consecuencia, el proceso de conformación de la agenda reflejó una corriente política que reconoce cómo las legislaturas y los partidos políticos suelen ser débiles en América Latina, mientras que los grupos de interés pueden tener una influencia mayúscula sobre ejecutivos que dominan los procesos de formulación de las políticas.

control de armas; Brasil; corrientes múltiples; estudio de las políticas; conformación de la agenda

Résumé

Le contrôle des armes à feu est une question politique pertinente au Brésil depuis plus de vingt ans. Le premier objectif de cet article est de comprendre et d'expliquer cette importance inhabituelle dans l'agenda politique. La seconde est la vérification empirique d’une proposition de modification du cadre à flux multiples de John Kingdon qui pourrait permettre une application plus appropriée au contexte latino-américain. Les résultats suggèrent que les partisans du contrôle des armes à feu et de la libéralisation des armes à feu ont pu exploiter la hausse des homicides et leurs relations étroites avec législateurs et présidents pour coupler les courants et réintroduire systématiquement la question à l'ordre du jour. Le processus a été marqué par la forte influence des groupes d'intérêts opposés, tandis que les partis politiques et l'opinion publique ont joué un rôle secondaire. En conséquence, le processus d'établissement de l'ordre du jour reflétait un courant politique qui reconnaît à quel point les assemblées législatives et les partis politiques sont souvent faibles en Amérique latine, tandis que les intérêts particuliers peuvent avoir une influence majeure sur les dirigeants qui dominent l'élaboration des politiques.

contrôle des armes à feu; Brésil; plusieurs flux; études politiques; façonner l'ordre du jour

Introduction

This article has two research objectives. The first is to understand and explain the unusual prominence of the gun control issue in the Brazilian political agenda during the past 25 years. The second is the empirical verification of a set of proposed modifications for John Kingdon’s (1995) Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) that may allow a more appropriate application to the Latin American context (Sanjurjo, 2020b).

Regarding the first, public efforts to control gun proliferation and acquisition are barely known in Latin America and gun control is largely absent from public and political debates ( Sanjurjo, 2019 ). In most countries, the specific issue is normally subsumed within general concerns over public security. In others, it gains public and political attention intermittently, mostly after episodes of extreme violence or high-profile murder cases. When it happens, gun violence turns into a matter of polarized debate for a couple of weeks but can hardly adhere the public and media attention for long.

One of the very few exceptions in this regard is Brazil, where gun control has been a prominent topic of discussion for over two decades. In fact, it was at the center of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign in 2018, as the new president pledged to abolish existing gun laws and liberalize their acquisition and use by civilians as part of a “law and order” message that resonated strongly with voters ( Hunter and Power, 2019 ). However, this is only the last chapter of a longstanding political conflict that began in the 1990s and led to the approval of the 2003 Disarmament Statute² , which prohibited the carry of firearms and strongly discouraged their possession and use among civilians. What is more, the Statute included the legislator’s desire to implement a comprehensive ban on firearm sales to civilians, a controversial aspect that was finally rejected in 2005 through a national referendum.

In what constitutes another regional rarity, gun control managed to call the attention of local academics, who have studied the prominent role played by religious communities ( Cesar Conrado, 2006 ) and non-governmental organizations ( Lucas, 2008 ; Ballestrin, 2010 ) in agenda-setting, the legislative discussions of the Disarmament Statute ( Santos, 2007 ) and the influence of Lula’s administration ( Inácio, 2006 ) and of the Parliamentary Front of Public Security (e.g.: Faganello, 2015 ; Macaulay, 2019 ; Hinz, Vinuto, and Coutinho, 2020) in the legislative agenda. Authors have also tried to explain why Brazilian legislators delegated their decision-making powers to the electorate in 2005 ( Correa and Nunes, 2006 ; Magalhães Araújo and Santana, 2006 ), as well as the influence of written media ( Fuks and Novais, 2006 ), social networks ( Sorj, 2006 ), communication campaigns ( Lissovsky, 2006 ) and public propaganda (Vital da Cunha, 2006) in the referendum campaign, just like the overall reasons behind its surprising result ( Iser, 2006 ; Mota, 2006 ).

The author himself used this research in a former study to apply the Multiple Streams Framework and provide an overall explanation of the Statute’s policy formation process (Sanjurjo, 2020a, chap. 5). The MSF is a conceptual tool that sees the policy process as a complex phenomenon of a heterarchic nature, with various factors converging and influencing agenda-setting and policy decision-making. Among other reasons, it stands out due to its remarkable adaptability to different policy contexts, as its structural features are flexible enough to be applied to nearly any place, time, or policy ( Cairney and Jones, 2016 ).

However, this does not mean that the MSF can explain agenda-setting and policy decision-making equally well in all contexts ( Jones et al., 2016 ). For this reason, in another previous study entitled Taking the Multiple Streams Framework for a walk in Latin America (Sanjurjo, 2020b), the author challenged the general portability of the framework by confronting it with a political reality that compromised some of its assumptions. The MSF appeared to be capable of capturing the different dynamics at play, but the study concluded that the political stream could be modified in order to acknowledge political contexts in which legislatures and political parties are frequently weak, whereas powerful interest groups can exert a very strong influence over executives that usually dominate policymaking.

To assess these claims empirically, this article applies the MSF again to the Brazilian context, this time with two more ambitious objectives. First, to understand and explain the unusual prominence of the gun control issue in the Brazilian political agenda during the past twenty-five years. Second, to empirically verify the proposed modifications to the MSF. That is, to assess if in the Latin American context it would be more appropriate for the framework’s political stream to acknowledge presidential coalitions and interest groups as the most influential actors, with public opinion as only an influential secondary variable (Sanjurjo, 2020b).

With these goals in mind, this article is structured in the following manner. After this introduction, a second section will present the MSF and analyze the proposed modifications for its political stream. A third section will then apply the analytical framework to explain several agenda-setting processes. The fourth section discusses the empirical findings. The article ends with conclusions and bibliographic references.

Agenda-setting and the Multiple Streams Framework in Latin America

Agenda-setting is the process by which public issues are constructed and defined, and then gain or lose the attention of the public and elites ( Majone, 2006 ). Its study implies the search for causal mechanisms that explain agenda and policy changes. This is not an easy task, however, as these processes occur within complex systems and follow decisions based on limited information and high levels of uncertainty ( Simon, 1957 ). Moreover, they exhibit positive and negative feedback cycles ( Pierson, 2000 ), may involve time spans of decades, transcend policy areas and branches of government, and encompass all forms of political actors and institutions with potentially different values, interests, perceptions and preferences. This complexity also makes sequential explanations unfeasible ( Lasswell, 1956 ), leading empirical social researchers to use more sophisticated conceptual tools that allow them to simplify causation and relate social, economic and political elements into a condensed but still coherent and consistent account of the social world ( John, 1998 ).

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) is among those approaches that stand out for most modern policy scholars. As one of the most-cited works in the public policy field, the MSF is largely based on the ideas espoused in John Kingdon’s seminal book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy (1995), themselves an adaptation of Cohen, March, and Olsen’s (1972) Garbage Can Model (GCM) of organizational choice. Essentially a book on agenda-setting in the federal political system of the United States, its use has expanded considerably in the thirty-five years from its development and included applications for agenda-setting, policy formation and implementation, as well as for all levels of governance, policy sectors and geographical regions ( Cairney and Jones, 2016 ).

Kingdon’s baseline is the complexity, messiness and unpredictability of the policy process. Ambiguity is at the heart of this conceptualization known as ‘organized anarchy’, which incorporates ideas of bounded rationality and satisficing behavior ( Simon, 1957 ) that emphasize the fundamental role that chance and ambiguity play in individual and organizational choices. In accordance, policy formation cannot simply be a rational response to public problems. On the contrary, the MSF suggests that there is no systemic relation between problems and solutions, but rather a dynamic process by which independent solutions wait for the emergence of compatible problems to enter the political agenda.

The MSF contains five core elements ( Figure 1 ). First, three processes take place simultaneously during agenda-setting: problems, policies, and politics. Kingdon refers to these processes as ‘streams’ that flow through the political system largely independently of each other. Streams can be seen as a collection of variables that develop and change over time.

Figure 1
The modified Multiple Stream Framework

The first stream or process is the problem stream , which largely consists of conditions, issues or public matters that citizens, entrepreneurs and policymakers want the government to address. Kingdon identifies indicators, focusing events and policy evaluations as variables that compose the stream and attract the policymakers’ attention to certain conditions. Other useful variables to include in this stream are the load of difficult problems occupying policymakers’ attention ( Zahariadis, 2003 ) and the presence of knowledge-brokers, who interpret and define the other variables of the stream without advocating for particular policy solutions ( Knaggård, 2015 ).

The second process is the policy stream, where experts and specialists interact and generate ideas in policy communities. These are networks or loose connections of civil servants, interest groups, academics and researchers, who engage in working out policy proposals for a specific policy field. They disseminate their ideas and persuade other participants of the benefits of their proposals. Policy alternatives compete in what Kingdon figuratively calls the ‘policy primeval soup’, a process that narrows policy choices to the ones that receive serious consideration. Most proposals are ignored and eventually disappear, but some are picked up to be softened up, discussed, modified or combined in order to meet the policy community’s criteria of survival, which includes expected costs, technical feasibility and value acceptability. The ones that pass these filters can become viable policy solutions waiting to be coupled to a particular problem.

The third stream influencing agenda-setting is the political stream , made up by actors and processes that act and develop at the level of macro-politics. Three elements were especially relevant in Kingdon’s (1995) original work: swings in public opinion, interest group pressure campaigns and administrative or legislative turnovers. Among the three elements, national mood swings and administrative or legislative turnovers were supposed to exert the greatest influence on political agendas.

However, the operationalization of this stream was somewhat unclear and so was the role of political parties. This prompted a few attempts to modify the stream for the purpose of improving its efficacy in dissimilar contexts. Zahariadis (1995 , p. 33-36) suggested combining the three into the ideology and strategy of governing parties, which reflected the dominance that majority parties would have over the political stream in parliamentary systems. Herweg, Huß, and Zohlnhöfer (2015) agreed with this revision, but suggested that public opinion and interest groups should not be dismissed but rather kept as secondary variables that have a strong effect over party behavior.

In the case of Latin America, we suggested that a more appropriate political stream should acknowledge political contexts in which legislatures and political parties were weak, whereas influential interest groups could exert a very strong weight over executives that control policymaking. As a consequence, the political stream could have the presidential coalition and interest groups at the center stage, with public opinion as an influential secondary variable (Sanjurjo, 2020b).

This proposal draws from two common premises of policymaking in the region. The first is the critical predominance of the executive in policymaking as a result of the powers granted by certain forms of presidential systems but also to the habitual weakness and subordination of courts, legislatures and other mechanisms of horizontal accountability ( O’Donnell, 1994 ; Cheibub, Elkins, and Ginsburg, 2011). The second is the enhanced influence of certain interest groups in policy formation ( Hochstetler and Friedman, 2008 ; Klimovich and Thomas, 2014 ), which is a consequence of the representation voids left by fragile parties and party systems ( Mainwaring and Scully, 1995 ; Roberts, 2015 ), the prevailing influence of corporatist practices ( Schmitter, 1974 ; Chen, 2018 ) and weak and dependent states (Hellman, Jones, and Kaufmann, 2003; Franceschet and Díez, 2012 ).

This crucial point made, the problem, policy and political processes or streams flow through the political system largely independently of each other. Nevertheless, there are times when the streams evolve in synchronicity, couple to one another and allow agenda and policy change to happen. To that end, Kingdon introduces the concept of policy windows, as well as a looser definition of policy entrepreneurs.

These so-called ‘policy windows’ or ‘windows of opportunity’ are the fourth core element of the MSF. These are critical moments in time in which the streams can be coupled or brought together. Kingdon describes them as opportunities for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions or draw attention to their special problems. They are usually of short duration, predictable or unpredictable, and can occur as a consequence of events in the problem or political streams. Furthermore, policy windows are necessary but insufficient conditions for agenda change, as there must also be a viable alternative from the policy stream that can be coupled to a compatible problem as its solution, and policymakers must be receptive to it.

Hence, when an appropriate window opens, advocates of policy alternatives from the policy stream sense their opportunity and try to seize the moment. These advocates are called policy entrepreneurs and Kingdon (1995 , p. 179) describes them as “advocates who are willing to invest their resources – time, energy, reputation, money – to promote a position in return for anticipated future gain in the form of material, purposive, or solidary benefits”. Entrepreneurs can be individual or collective actors and are anywhere in the political system, from the Senate to the media and social movements.

Policy entrepreneurs must recognize when the processes or streams are ripe. In other words, when a problem is ready to be addressed, a corresponding solution is available, and the political climate makes the right time for change. If an entrepreneur thinks this is the case, he may try to join the streams together and push his policy proposal in the agenda. That means attaching or coupling their proposal to a problem and finding receptive politicians. Chances for a favorable outcome – understood as the successful entry of an issue in the political agenda – increase dramatically when all three streams are coupled together.

Gun control: an idea whose time has come

Gun control has been a prominent topic of discussion in Brazil for more than two decades. For that matter, the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) will be applied to a timeframe that begins with the entrance of the issue in the public agenda in the mid-1990s and ends with its current developments in 2020. The empirical analysis will be organized in accordance with the structure and dynamics of the MSF. Therefore, each stream will have its own section and the agenda coupling processes will be condensed in a particular section as well.

The problem stream: Gun homicides on the rise

Two indicators are particularly relevant. The first is the brutal epidemic of violence that Brazil has been suffering since the 1990s (Murray, Cerqueira, and Kahn, 2013). Among the many visible dimensions of the problem, homicides draw the most attention. Brazil is an extreme case for that matter. With over 65.000 in 2017, the country has more murder cases per year than any other country in the world. Despite not having any widespread violent conflict in its recent history, the homicide rate tripled in the last four decades ( Figure 2 ), going from 11,5 killings per 100.000 inhabitants in 1980 to 30,5 in 2017 (Brazil: MS/SVS/CGIAE, no date; World Bank, no date). Moreover, this growth is largely a consequence of the increase in gun homicides. Guns were namely the instrument of choice in only 43,9 percent of all homicides back in 1980, but that percentage has risen above 70 percent since 2003 ( Waiselfisz, 2015 ; Ipea and FBSP, 2019).

Figure 2
Homicide rates and percentage of homicides committed with firearms in Brazil, 1970-2017

*Rates per every 100.000 population.

The second relevant indicator are statistics regarding the use and impact of guns, which researchers began to gather at the end of the 1990s. For instance, this allowed them to estimate that most firearms in the country would be illicit, either criminal or informal, and thus more likely to be used in criminal activities ( Dreyfus and Sousa Nascimento, 2010 ). Another influential study found that among firearms used in crime in Rio de Janeiro, over 75 percent were Brazilian made and half had been previously registered by ‘good citizens’ ( Rivero, 2005 ).

Regarding policy feedback , disarmament advocates were unhappy with the so-called SINARM-Law³ of 1997, because it did not have the reduction of civilian gun arsenals among its objectives. In the same way, the Law brought major advancements but left many gun control advocates unsatisfied due to its various limitations ( Iootty Dias, 2005 ). For example, the law was supposed to create a digital national database of all registered and seized guns in the country, but technical deficiencies, scarce resources and political rivalries between local and federal police agencies critically hampered its proper functioning. Likewise, it established the compartmentalization of information and control mechanisms between the Army and the Federal Police, but the required establishment of an inter-agency protocol was never implemented. Both institutions remained isolated and the Federal Police was not able to access the Army’s registries.

The Disarmament Statute was also heavily criticized once it came into force. Gun users and gun rights advocates called it into question because it made gun acquisitions more difficult. In the case of self-defense, for instance, it allowed civilians to acquire a maximum of two guns and raised the requirements that they needed to satisfy in order to be granted licenses. This was of course the Statute’s main goal: to filter out risky candidates, but also discourage less motivated individuals from acquiring firearms, at least through legal channels. This may have been accomplished, as legal gun sales plummeted by more than 60 percent after the Statute’s implementation (Pekny et al . , 2015).

In addition, the overall impact of the Statute is heavily contested. On the one hand, there is practically a consensus in the Brazilian scientific community regarding its positive effects, with several studies arguing that the law had a powerful impact on gun deaths and homicides on the years that followed its approval ( Souza et al., 2007 ; Waiselfisz, 2015 ). But not everyone agrees with these findings. The reported improvement in the national homicide statistics hides the fact that only a minority of the states reduced their gun deaths after the Statute’s implementation, while the rest stayed unchanged or continued the former positive trend.More importantly, the state of São Paulo was largely responsible for the overall improvement and its reduction in gun deaths began a year before the approval of the Statute ( Waiselfisz, 2015 ).

What seems more likely, therefore, is that the Statute emphasized a sharp drop in homicides that occurred as a result of the modernization of São Paulo’s police forces and the approval of several other security policies at the state level. In consequence, the most important factor does not seem to be the passing of national legislation, but the vigor with which the legislation was enforced on a state level and how it supplemented other security policies and programs ( Goertzel and Kahn, 2009 ). Ultimately, the positive impact that the Disarmament Statute had on gun deaths was no longer noticeable after 2010, when killings began to rise again at a fast pace until 2017 ( Figure 2 ). This strengthened the widespread opinion that this was not an effective policy for controlling crime and violence.

When it comes to focusing events , authors studying the formation process of the Disarmament Statute point at a number of especially dreadful episodes that drew international attention to Brazil’s armed violence problem during the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s (e.g.: Ballestrin, 2010 , p. 187). Foremost among these were the massacres of Carandiru (1992), Candelária (1993) and Vigário Geral (1993), as well as the execution of journalist Tim Lopes (2002) and the Bus 174 hostage crisis (2000). These events had a strong impact on public opinion and on national and international media, partly because they involved police brutality and depicted the Brazilian security forces’ disregard for human rights.

However, most Brazilians are arguably accustomed to a widespread climate of everyday violence. In fact, more Brazilians are murdered on any given day than in any of the former massacres, which is why crimes and acts of violence must be especially striking to draw the media’s attention for more than a couple of days. For this reason, it is unclear to what extent episodes such as these drew specific attention to gun control. As pointed out by Fonseca et al. (2006 , p. 31), “it was not specific tragedies that mobilized society, but the acknowledgement that the country lives a permanent civil war”⁴ .

The same is probably true for other infamous acts of violence that occurred after the enactment of the Disarmament Statute. Among others, the São Paulo violence outbreak by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Commando of the Capital) criminal organization in 2006 or the assassination of the city councilwoman of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro, Marielle Franco, in 2018. Killings and dreadful events of this magnitude probably reminded Brazilians of the everyday extreme violence to which they have become accustomed.

The fourth variable under consideration is the problem load , that we operationalize through election polls and the classical ‘most important problem’ question ( Figure 3 ) ( Datafolha, 2015 , 2018 , 2019a ). In this regard, it was in 1997 when a first public opinion poll showed that public insecurity was the most pressing problem for the residents of São Paulo ( Dreyfus et al., 2003 , p. 32). At the national level, worries over insecurity were on the rise as well during Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s (FHC) government (1995-2002), but the drop in the value of the Brazilian real at the end of the decade kept unemployment as the most urgent social matter. At the turn of the century, public insecurity was the second most pressing problem for Brazilians.

Figure 3
Main problem facing the country, 1996-2019

*When there is more than one measure per year, yearly average is used.

As the economy began to recover during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s governments (Lula, 2003-2006, 2007-2010), unemployment narrowed and gave way to other worries related to health and education. Corruption also came to be seen as an urgent problem due to the outbreak of the ‘ mensalão scandal’, a vote-buying scheme in congress that almost ruined the ruling party in 2005 and turned corruption into the most important element for voters facing the coming elections (Sousa Braga, Floriano Ribeiro, and Amaral, 2016, p. 96-99)

In the meantime, preoccupations over violence and insecurity continued growing and became the most pressing issue for the first time in 2007. After that, it remained among the top three concerns of Brazilians until the last years of Dilma Rousseff’s presidencies (2011-2016), when the country fell into a dramatic and multidimensional crisis that turned public opinion on its head. Since then, insecurity competes for attention with an economic emergency caused by a prolonged recession, a political crisis of rising polarization and falling trust in established parties, as well as a corruption crisis brought to the fore by the Lava Jato investigation ( Hunter and Power, 2019 ). When Jair Bolsonaro came into office in 2019, public insecurity was the number one issue in the country.

At last, knowledge brokers are important as well in the process, as several researchers became involved with gun violence in the second half of the 1990s. Specific research institutes were created within universities, while researchers and activists established NGOs that also worked on the ground ( Ballestrin, 2010 ). Prominent among those were the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo (NEV-USP), the Sou da Paz Institute, Viva Rio, and the Religion Studies Institute (Iser). These were the first to investigate gun-related issues in Brazil and in Latin America. By the end of the decade, they were producing a steady flow of reports about the impact of guns on urban violence ( Cukier and Sidel, 2006 , p. 218-220; Lucas, 2008 ).

Eventually, the line that separates knowledge-brokers and policy entrepreneurs becomes blurred, as many of these individual and collective actors went on to embrace disarmament ideas and got involved in the development of policy alternatives. It is also worth noting that unlike in the United States, where it is possible to find knowledge brokers holding conflicting views, in Brazil the landscape seems to be rather homogeneous with everyone pulling towards disarmament or more stringent gun control.

The policy stream: gun control vs. gun rights

The ideas that eventually evolved into the Disarmament Statute came from Brazilian academics, researchers and activists involved with the small arms movement ( DerGhougassian, 2011 ; Álvarez Velasco, 2016 ). This was an international effort carried out during the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s to securitize (Buzan, Wæver, and Wilde, 1998) small arms. That is, to place small arms and light weapons on the international agenda by promoting a narrative that defines them as a humanitarian issue and associates them with high levels of armed violence.

Policy proposals revolved around disarming society as much as possible, as a way to curb and eventually end armed violence. This meant adjusting flow and stock variables by avoiding the entry of new small arms while reducing and destroying existing arsenals. Mutation and recombination processes eventually led to the materialization of policy alternatives: the sale of guns to civilians should be restricted or forbidden, their use restricted and sanctioned, and their general possession discouraged through taxes, administrative formalities and voluntary weapon collection programs.

Contrary to what might be expected, the policy alternatives that were brought forward gained acceptance quickly in the policy community and were largely undisputed. The protagonists explain this phenomenon noting that there was no information regarding firearms or their control at the time, neither in Brazil nor in Latin America. Disarmament and gun control advocates had a monopoly over specialized information and practitioners neither opposed nor presented alternatives (Sanjurjo, 2020a, p. 143). This meant dealing with a highly integrated network of participants with similar backgrounds, knowledge and worldviews, which encouraged the development of proposals under high levels of consensus ( Zahariadis and Allen, 1995 ).

It also helped to pass the community’s criteria of survival. According to their own research, the causal relations between more stringent gun control policies and lower levels of armed violence were clear (e.g.: Rangel Bandeira and Bourgois, 2006 ) and all its components were technically feasible. They were also consistent with the values of the participants, who belonged mostly to the political left, were pacifists and believed that the state should hold the monopoly on violence ( Ballestrin, 2010 , p. 187-201).

Oddly enough, it was the approval of the Disarmament Statute in 2003 that motivated the development of ideas that challenged its theoretical principles and causal relations (Sanjurjo, 2020a, p. 150). Such a backlash became popular among security practitioners, gun enthusiasts and all those who consider guns their only real defense against crime. Their views and policy efforts are spearheaded by politicians and practitioners closely related to police and military corporations, whose ideas can be framed in what Faganello (2015) refers to as an authoritarian-securitarian ideology. In accordance, society would be marked by the loss of authority and by the constant threat of violent crime, as well as by a marked divide between good and bad citizens. The latter should be subjected to hardline policies and not constantly defended through human rights discourses.

From this point of view, gun liberalization is a central element of a policy paradigm that also pushes for the legal protection of police agents, punitive sanctions and lowering the minimum age for criminal liability ( Quadros and Madeira, 2018 ; Macaulay, 2019 ). Brazilians would have a right to self-defense and stringent gun control policies would take that possibility away from good citizens for the sole benefit of armed criminals. Furthermore, gun possession and use are seen as fundamental rights that make individual liberty possible ( Lissovsky, 2006 ). Hence, the Disarmament Statute would have greatly aggravated the security situation but also put inherent rights and liberties at risk. As a result, policy alternatives vary but share common goals: to modify or revoke the Disarmament Statute in order to allow gun carrying and liberalize gun sales.

As already stated, pushing these ideas were mostly firearm enthusiasts, security practitioners and rightwing politicians, who since the approval of the Disarmament Statute set out to regain the gun control policy community from the dominance of academics and gun control activists. Their ideas were met with strong opposition since the beginning and had to compete within a growingly polarized network of heterogeneous experts. This made their acceptance in the policy community much more difficult, but their development and dissemination were facilitated by the fact that the Disarmament Statute proved incapable of containing armed violence after 2010. Furthermore, the causal relations between an armed citizenry and lower levels of violence were scientifically disputed but easily conceivable ( Lott, 1998 ; Quintela and Barbosa, 2015 ), while all its components were technically feasible.

The political stream: Interest groups, legislators and presidents

Public support for different gun regulations is influenced by various factors. In favor of more stringent policies were the circumstantial optimism transmitted by a leftist government with an ambitious security agenda, as well as the persistent belief by most Brazilians that gun proliferation is an important risk factor for crime and violence. These attitudes clash with partisan opposition to the left, with the notion of gun possession and use as individual rights and with the widespread lack of confidence in the state’s capacity to control crime, which in turn would make armed self-defense an imperative.

Overall, these factors help explain the first national mood swing that occurred at the beginning of the 2000s, when national opinion surveys from September of 2003 suggested that 82 percent of Brazilians supported a ban on the trade of guns (Folha de S. Paulo , 2003). This was the first survey on the matter and the surprisingly massive support remained unchanged until the start of the referendum campaign in July, 2005 ( Datafolha, 2005 ). Only three months later – ten days before the referendum – the national mood swung back and a final national poll suggested a radical change: only 45 percent would vote in favor of the prohibition, against 49 percent who would vote against it ( Inácio, 2006 , p. 59).

Since then, crime continued growing and so did the demand for public security. However, public support for loosening gun legislation remained a minority. According to a yearly poll by Datafolha (2019b), the belief that regular citizens should not be allowed to possess firearms has remained between 55 and 66 percent since 2013. Hence, after president Bolsonaro was elected, most Brazilians were in favor of maintaining the Disarmament Statute in place, and 70 percent even rejected his proposal to facilitate gun carrying among civilians (Datafolha, 2019b).

As will be seen in the following section, administrations and legislatures were also crucial in the agenda-setting process. Especially relevant were the efforts made by four administrations, led by three presidents and one state governor: president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC, 1995-2003), governor of Rio de Janeiro Anthony Garotinho (1999-2002), president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula, 2003-2006), and president Jair Bolsonaro (Bolsonaro, 2019-). Regarding legislators, it is not possible to name them all. However, it seems fair to say that there were a handful that adopted gun control or liberalization as their particular pet projects and had a crucial impact on the process: federal senator Renan Calheiros, federal congressman Renildo Calheiros, federal congressman Raul Jungmann, federal congressman Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, federal congressman Alberto Fraga, federal congressman Luis Antonio Fleury, federal congressman Rogério Peninha Mendonça, and federal congressman Laudivio Carvalho.

Particularly relevant for the political stream are the nonpartisan parliamentary groups known as the bancada da bala , which gather policymakers who are strongly in favor of gun rights and sympathize with a tough-on-crime position ( Faganello, 2015 ; Macaulay, 2019 ). Notable among these is the Public Security Parliamentary Front (PSPF) and the Committee on Public Security and Organized Crime, which gather many politicians funded by the Brazilian weapons industry. The latter had always tried to influence policymakers to oppose any additional regulations that could hurt the industry’s revenues and interests, but their investment in political candidates that supported liberal gun laws received an impressive return over the years, helping to elect an unprecedented number of candidates to congress and to state legislatures around the country. The PSPF, for example, had 210 founding members in 2011, which expanded to 299 and then to 306 in the 2015 and 2019 legislatures (Hinz, Vinuto, and Coutinho, 2020).

With the additional support of police and military corporations, the Bullet Front has grown into one of the largest caucuses in the National Congress and now amasses considerable agenda-setting power and influence. Its radical wing is made up by former security practitioners who become policymaker in order to work for the preservation of their common values and interests. President Jair Bolsonaro, himself a former Army Captain, was one of the most active and fervent members of the PSPF for many years. With the advent of his presidency, the heavy influence of the bancada da bala is no longer limited to the Legislative Power. So much so, that Bolsonaro’s original cabinet included no less than seven military ministers ( Quadros and Madeira, 2018 ; Hinz, Vinuto, and Coutinho, 2020).

At last, pressure campaigns in favor of disarmament and stricter gun control began in 1997 and intensified as of 1999. The grassroots NGO from Rio de Janeiro Viva Rio and the Sou da Paz Institute of São Paulo largely led the process. Together, they took on an intense advocacy and lobbying strategy on the need for civil disarmament and stricter gun control policies ( Lucas, 2008 ). Both organizations held marches and massive street demonstrations in state capitals all over the country, sometimes bringing together tens of thousands of people. They relied on the support of the Globo Network, advertising companies and famous artists to set up elaborate media campaigns, and obtained the support of practically all religious congregations, women associations, medical associations and victims associations, among others. They also devoted a team of researchers to develop information that would legitimize their positions. Through their public advocacy, they managed to keep or systematically reintroduce the issue on the public agenda from 1997 all the way to the referendum of 2005.

On the other side of the aisle is what one might describe as a local gun lobby, mainly comprised by the Bullet Front and the national weapons industry, but also by several user associations of gun dealers and enthusiasts, hunters and shooters. Such groups were always against any policy that would obstruct their access to firearms, but their political counter-campaign only intensified as of 2003, when it became clear that disarmament could find echo in the country’s capital. Thus, whereas disarmament and gun control advocates led an intense campaign between 1999 and 2005, supporters of gun rights were practically idle until the subject entered the governmental agenda in 2003 (Sanjurjo, 2020a, p. 150). It was at that point that they became organized and concentrated all their efforts to win the referendum and then modify or revoke the Disarmament Statute. With this purpose, gun rights advocates founded several organizations that worked primarily online and through social media, such as the Movement Viva Brazil, the Armaria and the Movement for Legitimate Defense ( Quintela and Barbosa, 2015 ).

Agenda coupling

There were several successful agenda coupling processes in the studied time period, when policy entrepreneurs were able to use windows of opportunity to couple the streams together and push their pet projects into the political agenda. Since there have been dozens of legislative proposals to alter the gun control policies in place, this section will focus only on those that were particularly meaningful to the overall process.

The first major agenda-setting process occurred in 1999, when researchers and activists in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro harnessed the media coverage on gun violence and began to advocate for specific policy alternatives. This was the first time that disarmament was demanded outside the policy community and it was coupled to a specific problem, as a solution to gun violence and homicides, which had been rising dramatically since the 1980s and had turned Brazil into one of the deadliest countries in the world. To couple the political stream as well, policy advocates knew that they needed political entrepreneurs on board, leading researchers related to Viva Rio – such as Antônio Rangel Bandeira and Rubem César Fernandes – to use their close ties to state and federal politicians to persuade them and push solutions into their agendas ( Inácio, 2006 , p. 44).

Two policy windows opened in the political stream. The first was the accession to power of Anthony Garotinho as the governor of Rio de Janeiro state in 1999 and his appointment of Luiz Eduardo Soares as coordinator of the department of public safety. The second was the result of a public opinion poll that suggested an astounding public support for public disarmament ( Mota, 2006 , p. 7, 15). With FHC as president, the federal government seized the opportunity and began to move the strings, with Justice Minister Renan Calheiros as the strongest advocate for a more stringent gun legislation. Eventually, advocacy tasks inside and outside the political system proved successful, as dozens of gun control-related bills were introduced in the National Congress in 1999, which indicates that the political stream was ripe enough for an agenda-coupling. It was not ripe enough for a change in policy, however, as none of the gun control-related bills would receive parliamentary approval. FHC governed through a heterogeneous coalition of parties that held a majority in Congress but often failed to vote together.

After the legislative debacle, non-political entrepreneurs intensified their public and political pressure on policy makers. Between 1999 and 2003, social movements and civil society organizations held massive public events on a regular basis, appeared continuously in the media and remained developing information that legitimized their objectives ( Lucas, 2008 ). Such campaigns were functional and effective to keeping the problem and policy streams loosely coupled for many years. In the political stream, the subject reentered the legislative agenda in early 2003, when the non-stop rise in crime and violence indicators led legislators Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh and Renildo Calheiros to argue against the sale of guns to civilians ( Correa and Nunes, 2006 , p. 123-124).

However, the definitive window of opportunity arrived with Lula’s accession to power in 2003, which opened the door for a second major agenda-setting process. Entrepreneurs had reasons to expect the political window and prepared accordingly. Luiz Eduardo Soares was appointed National Secretary of Public Security and as he himself claimed, “[t]his was my contribution: lead the Federal Government to that proposal”⁵ (Soares, apud Mota, 2006 , p. 7). Public insecurity had turned into the second major political concern in the country by then, and on June 2003, the Executive Branch summoned the National Congress to an extraordinary commission and transmitted the presidential message that all bills related to gun control should be given priority in the legislative agenda ( Inácio, 2006 , p. 44). The parliamentary process proved to be extremely difficult, but the advocacy campaigns and the public support turned the pressure on legislators overwhelming ( Magalhães Araújo and Santana, 2006 ; Santos, 2007 ). The Law nº 10.826 was sanctioned by the National Congress and signed by president Lula on December 22, 2003.

The policy formation process was not complete, however, as the ban on the sale of firearms was to be decided on a popular referendum (Inácio, Novais, and Anastasia 2006; Iser, 2006 ). The transfer of decision-making powers to the electorate extended the decision-making procedure for two years and gave supporters of the former status quo a second chance to invest new resources in a different decision-making arena. A third major agenda-coupling process took place, as the law structured the referendum campaign and established two parliamentary fronts with equal media exposure. The ‘Yes’ front used the slogan ‘For a Brazil Without Guns’, was conformed and organized by civil society leaders and led by senator Renan Calheiros and federal congressman Raul Jungmann. The ‘No’ side campaigned under the slogan ‘For Legitimate Defense’, was formed by the gun lobby and led by federal congressmen Alberto Fraga and Luis Antonio Fleury.

This chain of events implied a highly polarized agenda-setting processes, as opposing collective policy entrepreneurs coupled different policy solutions to the same policy problem. Gun violence and crime were the policy problems to solve, but their definition and corresponding solutions where antagonistic: Stricter gun regulations would keep guns away from violent offenders, while looser gun regulations would protect gun rights and allow good citizens to defend themselves and their families. Eventually, the move ended up being a political shot in the foot for disarmament supporters. The referendum was held on October 23, 2005, and over 95 million voters decided not to authorize the ban on the sale of guns to civilians. On the question “Should the trade of firearms and ammunition be prohibited in Brazil?”, 63,9 percent of registered voters decided against the prohibition. In consequence, the Disarmament Statute was held in place but without the ban on gun sales.

In retrospect, the approval of the Statute initiated a strong and enduring mobilization of conservative forces that conformed a powerful local gun lobby. Its efforts were spearheaded by the Bullet Front, which grew in numbers and influence with every legislative election ( Macaulay, 2019 ; Hinz, Vinuto, and Coutinho, 2020). One of their first major offensives materialized in a Direct Unconstitutionality Action, to which the Federal Supreme Court responded in 2007 by upholding the general constitutionality of the Statute, albeit overruling specific sanctions for illegal gun carrying. The latter had been severely limited by Law nº 10.826 and there were several successful attempts to ease these restrictions in the following years ( Pekny et al., 2015 , p. 14). Despite these challenges, policy entrepreneurs had little chances of success, as stringent gun control enjoyed public support and seemed to have a positive impact on security indicators.

The next relevant window of opportunity opened in the problem stream in 2011, when homicides began to rise again and put the efficacy of the Statute into question. The policy and political streams were loosely coupled since the referendum campaign and policy entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to couple the problem stream as well. Several bills were put forward, but the most relevant agenda-coupling process took place in 2012 with the Bill 3.722 by federal congressman Rogério Peninha Mendonça, which proposed the complete revocation of the Statute and the modification of various related measures. Among others, increasing the number of guns and ammunitions that could be purchased per person, abolishing cyclical tests aimed at proving the technical aptitude for handling weapons, and reducing the minimum age required for gun purchases from 25 to 21 years ( Pekny et al., 2015 , p. 15-16).

The so-called Firearm Control Statute was opposed by Rousseff’s Executive and did not have enough support in Congress. Nevertheless, it circulated through several congressional commissions and gained momentum as the Bullet Front grew in numbers after the 2014 elections. In 2015, a substitute Bill by federal congressman Laudivio Carvalho was approved by a special appointed commission and is waiting to be voted by the plenary. Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 and the results of the legislative elections in the same year made gun rights promoters anxious for a swift approval ( Costa, 2019 ). The question now is whether policy entrepreneurs will be able to exploit such major political windows of opportunity before it is too late.

So far, the Disarmament Statute remains in place, but Bolsonaro’s Executive has issued several provisional decrees since 2019 that facilitate gun acquisition and use. Among other dispositions, they increase the types and number of guns that hunters and shooters can acquire, they enable the carrying of up to two guns for self-defense, and they facilitate gun acquisition and carrying by security agents and municipal guards. Gun control proponents have voiced their complete rejection and both the Public Ministry as well as opposition parties have challenged their constitutionality in the Federal Supreme Court. In some cases, unconstitutionality actions have led to the publication of new decrees that override the previous ones (Instituto Igarapé and Instituto Sou da Paz, 2020; Vilela, 2021 ).

Findings and discussion

The application of the MSF proved that the framework is capable and well-suited to explain why agendas change or stay constant in Brazil. Moreover, it provided a comprehensive explanation for the entrance of gun control in the country’s political agenda and its maintenance as a contentious topic for over twenty years.

Accordingly, the Disarmament Statute was the consequence of various attempts by policy entrepreneurs to strengthen gun control policies, achieving a first full agenda-coupling in 1999 and a second in 2003. It was then the referendum of 2005 to decide over the ban on the sale of firearms to civilians that set a precedent for years to come, as contending entrepreneurs coupled antagonistic policy solutions to the same policy problem. In this way, both gun control and gun liberalization were pushed as solutions to the ever-growing problem of gun violence and crime. Since then, and particularly after homicidal violence began to rise again in 2011, entrepreneurs that oppose the Statute have tried to liberalize gun laws, accomplishing their own meaningful agenda-coupling processes in 2012 and 2019.

Overall, the process presents several particularities worth discussing. The first is the relevance of the country’s federal structure, as the Disarmament Statute came into being after similar laws had been implemented at the state level. As suggested by Zahariadis (2003 , p. 17-18), these other agenda-setting processes acted as precedents and as political policy windows that national policy entrepreneurs could capitalize. The second lies in the role played by the courts –and specifically the Federal Supreme Court– in the agenda-coupling processes, which is not a particular feature of this case study. On the contrary, the Brazilian political system possesses several elements that favor the judicialization of politics and it is common for political minorities to invoke the constitution against laws and normative acts issued by the legislative and executive powers ( Arantes, 2005 ). A third particularity is the use of mechanisms of direct democracy, since the ban on the sale of guns to civilians was decided on a national referendum. Unlike the judicial review process, such a transfer of decision-making power to the electorate had never been used in Brazil since the transition to democracy in 1988.

It is unclear how the use of judicial review processes and mechanisms of direct democracy should be acknowledged by the MSF. In some cases, their use can extend the decision-making procedure and add a new instance in which a law or proposal can be modified or vetoed, as in the referendum of the Disarmament Statute. Other times, however, their use is only a possibility that the opposition or electorate may or may not invoke. In any case, the mere possibility of calling a referendum or challenging the constitutionality of a norm already imposes constraints on policy ideas and potential policy changes, because the threat of a policy reversal makes changing the status quo more expensive in political terms. In such cases, it may be more appropriate to talk about whole new agenda-setting and decision-making processes altogether, in which these instruments may act as focusing events, veto players or even policy entrepreneurs ( Nowak, 2010 ; Sanjurjo, 2020a, p. 160).

Furthermore, president Bolsonaro has issued several presidential decrees, but most agenda-coupling processes were led by political entrepreneurs in Parliament, which challenges the well accepted notion that Brazilian presidents define the legislative agenda ( Ames, 2001 ; Alston et al., 2008 ). This finding is consistent with recent investigations that identify the Brazilian criminal policy field as exceptional and one where legislators are particularly active as agenda-setters ( Silveira Campos and Azevedo, 2020 ). However, it is important to remember that the Bullet Front’s modus operandi is that of an authentic pressure group ( Quadros and Madeira, 2018 ), which leads to processes of producer capture within the legislative arena that favor the interests of police and military corporations, as well as the private security sector or the local weapons industry ( Macaulay, 2017 ).

Therefore, the process also stands out due to the decisive role that interest groups played on either side. The gun control movement was led by civil society organizations that were close to the ruling party. They forced gun control into the public and political agendas and managed to keep it as a key political issue for many years. This is not an easy thing to do, as the United States clearly demonstrates ( Goss, 2006 ). However, the approval of the Statute triggered the awakening of interest groups and power groups on the other side of the divide. Thus, the political backlash against gun control that since then has maintained the issue on the agenda is spearheaded by politicians who often belong to police and military corporations and are funded by the national weapons industry. President Bolsonaro is perhaps the most prominent and openly defends these special interests ( Macaulay, 2019 ).

Despite being on opposing ends, these interest groups were able to fill representation voids and capture political demands that Brazilian political parties did not represent nor mediated. This is hardly exceptional. Party-oriented legislators have become more common in Brazil (Hagopian, Gervasoni, and Moraes, 2009) and at times their party system appears to be advancing towards institutionalization. Nonetheless, in terms of organizational coherence and connections with voters, political parties remain weak and can hardly fulfill their roles as intermediary institutions. There are various reasons for this, but among the most important is a proportional electoral system that favors volatility and fragmentation, weakens party control over politicians and facilitates the election of legislators representing special interests (Mainwaring, Power, and Bizzarro, 2018).

On the one hand, this makes the formation of fronts or factions –such as the bancada da bala – common in Congress, and their members often place loyalty to their organization or interest above party. This makes certain interest groups particularly influential ( Oliveira Gozetto and Thomas, 2014 ). On the other, it favors the development of clientelist electoral markets, through which legislators negotiate with executives and trade legislative power for access to pork and resources ( Desposato, 2006 ). As a result, the legislative powers of the president are enhanced, even though the lack of discipline and responsiveness of their contingent is a recurring problem that forces them to constantly negotiate. This may explain why Bolsonaro resorts so frequently to provisional decrees, which allows him to enact new legislation promptly and without congressional approval ( Ames, 2001 ; Alston et al., 2008 ).

Conversely, public support seems to have been important for the formation of the Disarmament Statute, but was irrelevant for the agenda-setting processes that try to revoke it. In fact, public support for loosening gun regulations remained a minority during the entire period (Datafolha, 2019b), but this did not prevent policy entrepreneurs from coupling the streams together more than once. Likewise, the fact that president Bolsonaro has issued various provisional decrees liberalizing gun laws suggests that the Disarmament Statute does not remain in place because of the public support it enjoys, but due to the difficulties that the president is facing to form a legislative majority.

In short, legislators representing special interests that counted on the support of the president were able to seize the rise in homicides to push gun control or gun liberalization as its solution and couple the streams together. In comparison, political parties and public support only played a secondary role. In this respect, the agenda-setting processes were partially consistent with the political stream that the author recommended for Latin America. That is, a political stream which recognized that legislatures and political parties are frequently weak, whereas certain interest groups can exert a great influence over governments that largely control the agenda-setting process (Sanjurjo, 2020b). While this is usually the case in the Brazilian political system ( Ames, 2001 ; Alston et al., 2008 ), the present case study appears to support the notion of a particular policy sector that is exceptional in this regard, with legislators representing special interests largely playing a leading role in the process.

Conclusion

Whereas gun control is largely absent from public and political debates in most parts of Latin America, in Brazil it has remained an important political issue for over twenty years. This article has tried to explain this phenomenon with the help of the Multiple Streams Framework, putting the pieces of the puzzle together and adding a synthetic and multidimensional perspective to the existing local literature on gun control and agenda-setting. Accordingly, proponents of both gun control and gun liberalization were able to exploit the rise in homicides and their close relations to different presidents to couple the streams together and systematically reintroduce the issue in the agenda. Overall, political parties and public opinion only played a secondary role in a process that was marked by the strong influence of opposing interest groups. In consequence, the agenda-setting process mirrored a political stream that acknowledges political parties are frequently weak in Latin America, while special interests can have a major influence over legislatures and executives in policymaking.

In this respect, the agenda-setting processes were partially consistent with the author’s recommended political stream for Latin America, which acknowledges that legislatures and political parties are frequently weak, while certain interest groups can be highly influential over executives that largely control the agenda-setting process (Sanjurjo, 2020b). This is also usually the case in the Brazilian political system, but the present case study supports the notion of a particular policy sector in which legislators representing special interests can also call the shots. Further research is needed to see if this dynamic is determined by the operations of particular pressure groups in Parliament –such as the Bullet Front– or if this is the legislative consequence of a party system that seems to be advancing towards institutionalization.

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• 2
  Brazil: Law nº 10.826/2003, and Regulatory Decree nº 5.123/2004.
• 3
  Brazil: Law nº 9.437/1997, and Regulatory Decree nº 2.222/1997.
• 4
  “[…] não foram tragédias específicas que mobilizaram a sociedade e sim a constatação de que se vive no país uma guerra civil permanente” ( Fonseca et al., 2006 , p. 31).
• 5
  “Minha contribuição foi esta: a de levar o governo federal para essa proposta” ( Mota, 2006 , p. 7).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  18 Feb 2022
• Date of issue
  Sep-Dec 2021

History

• Received
  16 May 2020
• Accepted
  8 Oct 2021