Social Movements in Brazil: From the 1970’s to the Present Day the Influence of Social Movements and their Relationship with Democracy and Party Organizations in the Last Fifty Years

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between social movements and democracy in the last fifty years in Brazil. This research aims to analyze the influence of demonstrations and street protests, which took place between 1970 and 2020, on the Brazilian democratic process and party institutions. The analysis starts from the social struggles against the dictatorship and Catholic Church through the CEBs (Base Ecclesiastical Communities) at the end of the 1970s. The struggles for redemocratization and for popular participation in the 1980s are also analyzed. The networked social movements and the new social movements, according to Alain Touraine, are also objects of this research. It is observed that social movements influence not only institutions and the democratic process but also individual and collective identities that share their ideologies, which expressively altered the political game and institutions’ functioning.