Parties and Governability in Brazil

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyzes the historical development and contemporary functionality of the Brazilian party system, emphasizing the post-1985 democratic regime. Environmental factors such as authoritarianism, federalism, presidentialism, statism, corporatism, personalism, and clientelism have all exercised strong anti-party effects in Brazil. The current party system is depicted as highly fragmented, highly competitive, highly volatile, and weakly institutionalized. The system is also extremely uneven in terms of parties' commitments to ideology and organization — the major exception being the Workers' Party (PT), which finally captured the presidency in 2002. The primary explanatory focus is on the electoral system used for the lower house (open-list proportional representation or OLPR), but the analysis also illustrates how OLPR interacts with various structural, historical, and institutional variables in Brazil. The chapter concludes by explaining how the party system persistently undermines the possibilities for governability in Brazil.