5. Brazil: Much Debate About No Reform

This chapter analyzes the debates about policy reform to democratize the media sector in Brazil from 2003 to 2013. At its core, the chapter aims to explain why there has been no democratizing media reform in Brazil so far. At first sight, reforms would have seemed likely for two reasons: first, there has been a broad advocacy coalition striving for democratization in the communication sector since the 1990s. Second, the left-wing PT, in power since 2003, has close links to this movement and, more importantly, has politically suffered from concentrated and oppositional media. Still, major reforms have not been undertaken. I will show that the conditions for reform—either through policy-oriented learning or induced by an external shock—have been detrimental but not prohibitive. However, although the Coalition for Democratization relies on a broad range of civil society actors and has a stable institutional structure organizing most of its members, it suffers from two restrictions. First, the fixed institutional structure does not flexibly integrate certain actors, most specifically potential policy brokers or translators from academia and regulatory agencies. Second, the demands were long framed based on a class perspective; only recently did a communication rights perspective gain ground, which rallies international support and is harder to combat politically. Similarly, in recent years the organizational structure became more flexible. The Coalition for Democratization’s opponent, the politically dominant Private Coalition, has a strong, coherent belief system and privileged access to political institutions, since a significant section of its members are elected congresspersons and thus at the heart of policy-making.