Power and Influence in the Green Agenda: Stakeholders and Advocacy Coalitions in Brazil

Abstract

This study identifies the types of stakeholders in advocacy coalitions within the Brazilian national green agenda subsystem from 2012 to 2021. Data were collected through documents and 17 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Additionally, 41 transcripts of National Congress hearings were coded and analyzed. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and the stakeholder analysis model served as the theoretical approaches. Results show that 143 organizational stakeholders actively participated in the subsystem’s political process, mostly classified as discretionary stakeholders who act as collaborators and legitimizers. The most influential stakeholders, classified as definitive stakeholders, act as agenda setters, regulators, and/or controllers. The four advocacy coalitions within the subsystem – enlightened technocrats, socio-environmentalists, modern developmentalists, and traditional developmentalists – seek to attract and influence these stakeholders. The coalitions with more definitive stakeholders achieved dominance within the subsystem. The studied period was divided into three phases. Phase 1 (during President Dilma Rousseff ’s government’), where control was shared between socio-environmentalists and modern developmentalists; Phase 2 (President Michel Temer’s government), during which modern developmentalists took control; and Phase 3 (President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration), with traditional developmentalists as the dominant coalition. This research contributes to the field of public administration by showing how coalitions build political influence through the mobilization of organizational stakeholders. Coalition dominance within the subsystem is directly related to their capacity to mobilize definitive stakeholders, highlighting the relevance of understanding stakeholder configurations and repositioning to analyze policy change and continuity.