The Public Prosecution Service and Social Movements: A Perspective on Diffuse and Collective Rights

Abstract

The article analyzes the relationship between the Public Prosecution Service and social movements from the perspective of diffuse and collective rights, with the aim of demonstrating the convergence between the institutional action of the Public Prosecution Service and contemporary forms of social participation directed toward the protection of human rights and meta-individual interests. It adopts a legal-doctrinal and historical-analytical methodology based on the examination of the evolution of social movements, the categories of citizenship, pluralism, and participatory democracy, the constitutional trajectory of the Brazilian Public Prosecution Service, and collective protection legislation. It argues that new social movements, especially from the 1970s and 1980s onward, began to claim fundamental rights of a collective and diffuse dimension, assuming a central role in the construction of participatory and emancipatory citizenship. It further shows that the Public Prosecution Service, particularly after the 1988 Constitution and the consolidation of public civil actions and civil inquiries, became one of the main institutional defenders of these interests, with judicial and extrajudicial instruments capable of fostering dialogue and cooperation with organized social actors. It concludes that there is a clear convergence of purposes between the Public Prosecution Service and social movements in the defense of society and solidarity rights, which requires ethical action, critical training, and an effective commitment to social transformation and participatory democracy.