POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES IN A COALITION PRESIDENTIALISM

Abstract During the Partido dos Trabalhadores’ federal administrations, the LGBT movement had important political outcomes that, nevertheless, decreased since 2011. Analyzing the impact of political opportunities over social movement outcomes, how can one explain this variation if only one party was chief of the Executive branch during this period and the LGBT movement sustained its networks in the state bureaucracy? In this paper, I suggest that the management of the Chief Executive over its bureaucracies’ and government coalition allies’ preferences opens and closes political opportunities in Brazil. The data presented here indicates that federal investments against homophobia varied along with the growth of the Frente Parlamentar Evangélica in the government coalitions, suggesting that the fortification of conservative parliamentary groups affected the outcomes of the LGBT movement.