Mobilização do Direito como Repertório de Ação Coletiva e Crítica Institucional no Campo Ambiental Brasileiro

The aim of this article is to characterize legal mobilization as a repertoire of social action in the Brazilian environmental field, analyzing how and why court action becomes a repertoire of collective action. The authors present data on the use of collective action, based on research using quantitative and qualitative methods. The main conclusions are that legal mobilization occurs through flows of interpersonal action between actors from government and civil society and that the perception of deficiency in representative and participatory institutional processes is an incentive for legal action. The authors further suggest that mobilization of legal institutions as a repertoire of collective action can generate a process of institutional critique