Moral Authority, Societal Cleavages, and Barriers to Intervention in Brazil and the US

In the Philippines, the Catholic Church’s high levels of “moral authority” facilitated its local protective interventions. This chapter tests the generalizability of community protection to Brazil and the US, unique cases that nonetheless share key characteristics of populist state violence with Duterte’s Philippines. However, original data analysis replicating, as closely as possible, the analysis in the Philippines does not reveal strong protective effects. Neither is police violence in Rio de Janeiro related to the location of Catholic infrastructure, nor does clergy inclusion in police reform build support among American audiences. The chapter then explains this divergence with the Philippines by turning to lower levels of “moral authority” for religious leaders in Brazil and the US. Crucially, moral authority in those two cases is tied to powerful social cleavages (socioeconomics and race in Brazil, and partisanship in the US). In such environments, religious leaders may possess opportunities for narrower intervention, but will struggle to generate broader community protection.