Unemployed People in Street Protests: Theories of Political Transitions and the Limits of the Brazilian Democratization

Abstract

Theories of political transitions have traditionally oscillated between top-down, institutionalist analysis and bottom-up analysis influenced by theories of new social movements. This chapter takes as its point of departure a political conflict at the end of the military regime in Brazil—the looting waves of 1983—in order to analyze social exclusions promoted by the political transition and later reinforced by its theoretical accountings. The narrative depicts three descriptive categories representing distinct levels of exclusion: looters, who contested a consensual transition; unemployed people, isolated by historical poverty and the local associativism; and impoverished criminals, entrenched in long-term institutional mechanisms. The result is a portrait of the people on the fringe of the transition.