The politics of Brazil’s access to information policies: history and coalitions

Abstract

How did the various legislative initiatives on access to information in Brazil culminate in the 12.527/11 federal law? Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework, this article analyzes the agenda setting and strategies of different coalitions, analyzing a broad array of news, interviews, laws, and official documents between 2001 and 2012. Two coalitions were identified: one in favor of changes in legislation, comprised of sectors of the Executive, legislative, the media and civil society; and another in favor of the maintenance of restrictive rules of access to information, composed of Armed Forces, Itamaraty (Brazil’s diplomatic corps) and the Senate’s Legislative Commission on Defense and Foreign Affairs. The article also identifies an overlap of two public policy subsystems: the transparency subsystem and the reconciliation one. The latter monopolized the public debate on the subject, contributing to the slowness in approving a transparency law. Itamaraty also emerges as the author of a strong lobby against changes in the rules for document classification, for reasons yet to be studied.

Keywords:
access to information; advocacy coalitions; agenda setting