Participatory democracy by default: land reform, social movements and the state in Brazil

Abstract

There is a growing literature on the experiences of participatory democracy in Latin America. Largely focused on urban areas and municipal service provision, the literature provides important lessons as to whether, how, and why participation works to improve the quality of democracy. In this paper, I examine an unlikely case of participatory democracy: the struggle for land reform in the Brazilian countryside. Analysing the relationships between the federal agency in charge of land reform in Brazil (the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) and the largest grassroots social movement organised to fight for the distribution of land (the Landless Movement) provides evidence of participatory democracy by default rather than by design: government officials who lack the resources and technical capacity to carry out reform are forced to rely on social movement actors who demand attention by routinely transgressing at the margins of acceptable (and legal) behaviour. At the same time, the features of political life in Brazil that allow or force the Landless Movement to collaborate with the state make it difficult for individual settlers to do so. For those individuals who do not feel adequately represented by the movement and attempt to be included on their own, the political system and culture continue to privilege the most powerful, thereby reinforcing prior settlement inequalities.