Abstract
Juan Albarracín examines the range of political parties in Brazil. In this article, he discusses the most important and sometimes contradictory findings about Brazilian political parties, the party system itself and its development since 1985. First, he presents a portrait of the fragmentation, polarization, and institutionalization of the party system and then turns to the legal framework and the new developments since 2002. Albarracín questions the assumptions made about the deficient role of political parties in the Brazilian Congress as well as the stabilization of the party system for they were based on analyses that had been solely centered on the defects. He concludes that Brazilian parties have a different purpose and meaning within the political system than they do in Western Europe—but this does not mean that they are automatically deficient. This is clearly demonstrated by the stabilization of the party system and the position of the parties in Congress.
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Notes
- 1.
These dimensions of the political party were introduced by Key (1942).
- 2.
The constant changes of party system can be attributed to both transformations in the political regime and the marginal importance of parties in the decision-making process within corporatist decision-making structures. Organized groups such as business people and labor unions had direct access to the state and did not require any indirect mediation through parties (Weyland, 1996: 5, see also Chap. 11).
- 3.
Tancredo Neves of the PMDB was indirectly elected president in 1985. He died before he could be sworn in. His vice-president, Jose Sarney, consequently took over as president.
- 4.
Data from Jairo Nicolau, Dados eleitorais do Brasil (1986–2006).
- 5.
Governismo is not an exclusive characteristic of the PMDB. Melo and Câmara (2012) suggest that at least three other parties (the PP, PTB and the PR) also display this tendency. See the end of this section for an explanation of the acronyms.
- 6.
It is important to note that Rousseff is neither an established politician within the PT (“party soldier”) nor a historical figure of the PT. She owed her nomination on the PT ticket to Lula, who intensively campaigned for her both within the party and during the general elections.
- 7.
The so-called Mensalão-Scandal is a clear case. In 2005 important members of the PT, including presidential chief of staff José Dirceu, were accused of making monthly payments to members of Congress from other parties in exchange for their support for the government’s proposals. Recently, the Brazilian Supreme Court condemned many high-ranking PT politicians for their involvement in the Mensalão.
- 8.
Information from Folha de São Paulo: “Confira o mapa dos governos estaduais eleitos este ano” (01/11/2010).
- 9.
Simply counting the number of parties represented in Congress or the number of parties that participate in an election does not indicate their relative importance (share of seats or votes). The effective number of parties provides the number of “relevant” parties in a party system, where relevance is determined by the number of seats or votes: The higher the fragmentation of a party system (according to Rae’s fragmentation index), the higher the effective number of parties. This index was proposed by Laakso and Taagepera (1979).
- 10.
The values of these measures for a two-party system can help to understand them: Rae’s fragmentation index is close to 0.5 and the effective number of parties is, naturally, very close to two.
- 11.
The highest level of fragmentation measured on the Rae index was reached in 1989 with 0.82. After this election, fragmentation in the first round of presidential elections was considerably reduced: 1994: 0.62; 1998: 0.61; 2002: 0.68; 2006: 0.59 (Santos, 2008: 67).
- 12.
Melo and Câmara (2012, see also Melo, 2010) introduce a path-dependent argument and characteristics of the PT and the PSDB to explain why these two parties became central in presidential elections. Both the 1989 and 1994 elections were critical events that established both parties (the PT in the former and the PSDB in the latter) as the focal parties of the left and center-right. Moreover, both parties had viable presidential candidates and formulated a clear national project/vision for Brazil.
- 13.
Hagopian et al. (2009) refer to this (macro) political cleavage around reform policies in the 1990s but do not restrict is structuring effect to presidential politics and suggest that it also affected politician’s behavior in Congress.
- 14.
Informe Latinobarometro 2011, p. 42. Available at: http://www.latinobarometro.org. Accessed 20/10/2014).
- 15.
Some scholars disagree with the assessment that the Brazilian party system has stabilized. Lucas and Samuels (2010) argue that the lack of ideological differentiation between parties hampers party system consolidation. Although Melo and Câmara (2012) disagree with Lucas and Samuels analysis, they present evidence showing that volatility in elections for the Chamber of Deputies measured at the state level is higher than the national average.
- 16.
Historically, regional parties were no rarity in Brazil. During the first Brazilian Republic (1889–1930) almost all states had a regional (hegemonic) party (Mainwaring, 1999: 264).
- 17.
A party has to present a certain amount of signatures, equivalent to 0.5 % of the valid votes of the previous election for the Chamber of Deputies in order to be recognized by the TSE as a party. These signatures have to be collected in at least one third of the states.
- 18.
For information about Brazilian electoral institutions, see Chap. 7.
- 19.
This regulation is known as verticalização (Nicolau, 2007: 101).
- 20.
Electoral campaigns are very expensive and are largely financed by private donations (Speck, 2005; Samuels, 2006b: 87, 95). According to the TSE, the three largest parties (measured ac-cording to the number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies) received in 2008 the following amounts: The PT received R$19,893,312.55, the PMDB around R$19,324,268.3 and DEM around R$14,562,240.3. The amounts for the smaller parties should also not be underestimated. See http://www.justicaeleitoral.jus.br/arquivos/tse-fundo-partidario-duodecimos-2008 (Accessed 08/16/2013).
- 21.
The HGPE begins 45 days before an election and is broadcasted three times per week (Nicolau, 2007: 103). The commercial value of the HGPE is R$2.4 billion, which is 20 times the value of the party fund and three times the value of all electoral campaign costs that are reported to the TSE (Speck, 2005: 146).
- 22.
The distribution of resources from the party fund was modified in January 2007 by the TSE and the smaller parties received more resources. In the same year the distribution was again changed by law in order to provide the larger parties with more resources (Fleischer, 2007: 339).
- 23.
An interesting example of this is the case of Fernando Collor. Before he was elected president he had changed party five times (Ames, Baker, & Renno, 2008: 110).
- 24.
According to the rules of procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, the party leaders set the agenda, are able to circumvent the discussion of legislative propels in the committees with requests for urgency and decide on the members of committees together with the chairperson of the chamber (Figueiredo & Limongi, 2000: 165; Santos & Vilarouca, 2008: 71.).
- 25.
The importance of informal rules is not only a characteristic of Brazilian parties and can be observed in other Latin American countries. Informal rules are also important, even in parties of advanced democracies. The difference lies in the preponderance of informal rules over formal arrangements (Friedenberg & Levitsky, 2006).
- 26.
Clientelistic networks arrange for the exchange of mostly private goods (such as money, food, etc.) for political support (usually votes).
- 27.
- 28.
The concept of the centralization of a party organization refers to the distribution of decision-making powers between the levels of the party organization (national, regional and local levels). The more decisions (de jure or de facto) that the regional or local level can make, the more decentralized the party organization. In contrast, the more the national level can involve itself in decisions taken at the regional or local level, the more centralized the party organization (Duverger, 1959: 70).
- 29.
It is important to differentiate between partisanship as “a psychological attachment to a particular party” (Samuels, 2006a: 1) and party membership.
- 30.
This number is much higher than the average of 20 European democracies (4.99 %) at the end of the 1990s (Mair & Van Biezen, 2003: 8–10). This high level of party membership in Brazil does not necessarily indicate that parties are rooted in society, since this figures do not indicate how actively involved these citizens are in their respective parties.
- 31.
Coalitional presidentialism is a term used widely both by political pundits and academics to characterize the political dynamics and/or institutional design of the Brazilian polity. Although several understandings of the term exist, one of its features is the need to form government coalitions to guarantee governability (Power, 2010). “The mishmash of parties in Lula’s cabinet” (Lucas & Samuels, 2010: 63), necessary to maintain governability, could affect the intelligibility of the system, as Lucas and Samuels suggest, and also the perception of voters about the responsiveness and transparency of the political system.
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Acknowledgment
I thank Scott Mainwaring, Nara Pavão, and Laura Albarracín for their valuable comments and suggestions. Any imprecision or mistake remains my own.
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Albarracín, J. (2016). Political Parties and the Party System. In: de la Fontaine, D., Stehnken, T. (eds) The Political System of Brazil. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40023-0_9
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