Political Careers in Brazil: Long-term Trends and Cross-sectional Variation

Abstract

Brazil's political system is a combination of presidentialism and federalism, liberal rules for the creation of political parties and elections based on open-list proportional representation at federal, state and municipal levels. This gives rise to a complex opportunity structure, characterized by many parties, a great number of available professional positions and medium to strong links across and between levels of government. As a consequence, political careers are fairly easy to enter, since party leaders have little control over the choice of aspirants, but politicians face a high turnover in legislative positions and a high risk of being left out of the game altogether. Three main points are defended here. First, it is inadequate to analyze Brazilian political careers under the same criteria used in the USA. Second, they approach the integrated model defined by Jens Borchert, with intense movement not only between the three levels, but also between the legislative and the executive branches of government. Third, notwithstanding all this, a mandate in the federal Chamber of Deputies is still the lynchpin of a successful political career.