This is an Active Citation data project. Active Citation is a precursor approach to
Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI). It has now been converted to the ATI format.
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Project Summary
Brazil stands out as an international standard bearer for good governance in AIDS prevention. Civil-society mobilization is generally acknowledged to be a key driver of this continued success. This broader research project from which this article is drawn seeks to explain how Brazil’s civic associations have become central figures in the negotiation, development, and implementation of nearly every AIDS policy decision at both the national and the subnational level. The project attributes the continued success of Brazil’s AIDS movement to the active role of the state, both in helping new working-class organizations overcome socioeconomic challenges to mobilization and in expanding the number of strategies available to them for achieving political influence. By showing how the Brazilian state fostered autonomous civic organization and mobilization around AIDS policy, this research project addresses a critical question in the context of one of the most important development challenges of our day. The research project also makes an important contribution to the literature on civil-society development, modifying prevailing theories that focus on the state as an obstacle to political mobilization. Brazil is highly privatized and the most decentralized country in Latin America, factors that the literature suggests should fragment populist interests. Yet Brazilian AIDS associations are among the most scaled up and politically influential popular nongovernmental organizations in the region. In closely analyzing this unexpected case of broad civic engagement, the author identifies new factors that shape popular organization and mobilization in the era of neoliberal democracies, centering on the resources and channels of access to political power provided by the state. The study contributes to the broad social scientific endeavor of theory-building by reformulating theories of interest organizations so as to account for new cases of sustained civic mobilization in Latin America.
Data Abstract
The evidence presented in this project draws on original data collected during nineteen months (from January 2007 to May 2010) of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia, combining qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. Qualitative interviews and observation provided richly detailed information about specific events and allowed for the discovery of unanticipated themes. The author conducted over 100 in-depth, open-ended interviews with the civil society leaders, bureaucrats, politicians, and World Bank officials directly involved in AIDS policy development in Brazil. She also engaged in participant observation of over 40 policy-making meetings with AIDS-sector bureaucrats and civil society leaders from around Brazil. In addition, she conducted extensive archival research uncovering a wealth of unpublished government data, media reports, monographs, and activist memoirs. To complement the various forms of qualitative data collection, between February and May 2010 the author conducted an electronic survey of 123 civic AIDS organizations in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The survey generated a unique dataset of civic AIDS organizations in those states, with information from over one hundred questions on their constituencies, sources of income, organizational networks, political affiliations, and major political activities. The author also compiled and analyzed a national dataset of civic AIDS organizations in Brazil, based on a 2002 questionnaire conducted by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, allowing for an even broader set of observations. All in all, the data cover present information of AIDS policy across Brazil for the period from 1983 to 2010. The main source for policy analyses and monographs used was the Center for Documentation and Resources (CEDOC), an archive housed in ABIA (The Brazilian Inter-Disciplinary AIDS Association). Unpublished government documents from the national AIDS bureaucracy were obtained by making requests to government informants. Finally, the author collected media reports about AIDS in Brazil using the internet search tool Factiva.
Interviews after 2008 were audio recorded, and transcriptions were made of most (although not all) of them. Notes were taken both during and after all interactions with interview subjects. Some archival sources, such as policy briefs and monographs from CEDOC, were collected as hard copies. With the exception of a few historic photos in books that were unavailable for purchase, these sources were photographed or scanned. Media reports were collected as electronic documents. Government documents were collected as a mix of hardcopy and electronic sources. Few of the hardcopies have been scanned. The national catalog of AIDS NGOs has been scanned and also converted into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
Logic of Annotation and Activation
Citations are activated using the four criteria for assessment suggested in the Guide to Active Citation: centrality of the (evidence-based) claim, importance of the data source, contested or controversial nature of the (evidence-based) claim, and contested or controversial nature of the data source.