Intertwining public security policy and protest control in Brazil: Sports mega-events and international diffusion of repression

Abstract

The article analyzes the intertwining of public security and protest control policies in Brazil’s most recent protest wave from 2013 to 2016. We propose a dynamic and relational analytical model of the relationship between protest movements, the State, and social control based on the contentious politics approach. The mass demonstrations broke out in the middle of the Confederations Cup (2013), the World Cup (2014), and the Olympics (2016). We argue that these three sports mega-events generated resources and opportunities, as well as international pressures and constraints, for repressive innovations in strategies of public order and protest control. Changes in the legal order were pushed through harshening of criminal control and the internalization of transnational public security measures. Police learning processes have taken place through the global diffusion of new surveillance technologies, equipment, training, and emulation of protest policing tactics. In the long run, the mega-events legacy was introducing a new repressive set of legal norms, institutional practices, and control techniques of public order which is now available for use against common crime and in the police handling of street demonstrations.

Keywords

• Social control of protest
• diffusion of repression
• protest policing
• cycle of contention
• sports mega-events
• repression of protests in mega-events