The Use of Electoral Manipulation by Political Parties in Oligarchic Regimes: The Case of Brazil (190001930)

Abstract

The use of electoral manipulation by political parties has attracted much attention from political scientists recently, but the debate has focused primarily on the contemporary period and autocratic regimes. In this paper, our objective is to analyze the use of electoral manipulation during the historical Brazilian oligarchic regime, observed much before its first democratic transition. While most authors claim that electoral fraud at that time was widespread, turning the level of political competition extremely low, we contend that fraudulent practices were actually an instrument for regulating political competition. We base our analyses on an original dataset with information from historical Annals of the Brazilian Congress. Evidence from appeals presented at the legislative floor by parties that had lost previous electoral contests suggests high level of political competition in most Brazilian federative units. Those parties had the ability to report cases of violence, intimidation of voters, and other kinds of fraud, within the frame of a legitimate federal political arena, suggesting that not one, but several parties were legitimately competing for state resources in each state. In a political system characterized by clientelistic voter-politician relations and lack of citizenship rights, the maintenance of political stability required the control over the electoral process, from voters' registration to the counting of votes, but several parties were persistently competing for such a control. Electoral fraud during the Brazilian pre-democratic period served as mechanism for regulating elites’ struggle for power, rather than for eliminating competition altogether.