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Elections, Political Parties and Political Culture in Brazil: Changes and Continuities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

José Alvaro Moisés
José Alvaro Moisés
Affiliation:
Director of the Research Center for International Relations and Comparative Politics and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Universidade de São Paulo.
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Extract

The 1989 presidential elections confirmed the thesis that Brazilian voters use their ballots as weapons to express their dissatisfaction with the performance of their governments and, in particular, with the incumbents' ability to cope with the serious economic difficulties that have plagued Brazil in recent decades. Nearly thirty years after the last free presidential elections, the ballots cast across Brazil and in all segments of the society reflected a heightened plebiscitary tendency, especially in the most developed regions of the nation, that is, in modern Brazil. Looking at recent political history, we can observe that this trend became generalised in the 1970s, with the crisis of the authoritarian regime. Faced with a two-party system (Arena and MDB) imposed by the ruling military, the electorate voiced its protest by voting against authoritarianism and, in principle, in favour of democracy. Now that the authoritarian regime is no longer there, democracy seeks its consolidation – but the voters continue voting against; that is, they continue to use their ballots to reject incumbent governments (the 1986 elections being the only exception). The big change, however, is that now, in addition to reproving administrations which they deem inadequate, the voters are also protesting against the backwardness and vices of traditional Brazilian politics and, more specifically, against the practices of corruption, favouritism, and privatism.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 575 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 On plebiscitary and protest voting, see especially Lamounier, B., ‘Comportamento Eleitoral em São Paulo – passado e presente’, in Lamounier, B. and Cardoso, F. H., Os partidos e as eleições no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1975)Google Scholar. See also ‘O voto em São Paulo: 1970–1978’, in Lamounier, B., Voto de desconfianfa (Rio de Janeiro, 1980)Google Scholar, and Moisés, J. A. and Albuquerque, J. A. G., ‘1974, a avalanche dos votos de protesto’, in Moisés, J. A., Cenas de político explícita (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar. O'Donnell and Schmitter suggest that in the case of what they call ‘foundational elections’ – that is, elections that mark the close of transitions from authoritarianism to democracy – a phenomenon similar to the plebiscitary vote occurs, dubbed the ‘pendulum effect’. This term refers to the punishment that voters mete out to the right or left government administrations that mismanage economic problems. Although we cannot really call the 1989 Brazilian elections foundational since the authoritarian regime held elections throughout its duration, the characterisation has a certain degree of relevance given that the 1989 elections were the first since the military regime that actually involved effective alternation of power. On this topic, see O'Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P., ‘Convoking Elections (and Provoking Parties)’, in O'Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P. and Whitehead, L., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, 1986), Part IV, pp. 57–64Google Scholar. On the other hand, the 1986 elections should be understood within the context of the extremely exceptional circumstances that surrounded enforcement of the first phase of the Cruzado Plan, whose eventual failure and social costs were deliberately hidden from public view by the Sarney administration until after the release of election returns.

2 See my ‘Political Distrust, Dissatisfaction with Government and Democratic Legitimacy: The Implications of the Brazilian Paradox’, paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Chicago, 1992.

3 See the May 1989 surveys by the Brazilian polling agency IBOPE, covering a national sample of 2,750 voters. See also a Political Culture Data-bank, a national survey of 2,077 voters, conducted by CEDEC/Data-Folha under my coordination, the data of which are used in this text. On the relation between popular dissatisfaction with politicians and the crisis of representation, see also Lavareda, A., ‘O financiamento da atividade partidaria-electoral: atitudes do eleitorado’, presented at the seminar ‘Etica e Política’, sponsored by the Centro Joao XXIII and Ibrades, 25–27 08, 1989Google Scholar.

4 Hélio Jaguaribe is one of the main defenders of the first interpretation, as can be seen in Jaguaribe, H., ‘Para enfrentar nos anos 90’, a series of three articles published in the Folha de São Paulo on 4, 7 and 11 01, 1990Google Scholar. In relation to the second line of interpretation, see Sallum, B. Jr et al. , ‘Eleições presidenciais e crise do sistema partidário’, in Lua Nova, vol. 20 (1990)Google Scholar. With certain qualifications, Eli Diniz can also be classified as a proponent of this second explanation; see Diniz, E., ‘Eleições presidenciais 89, I, II, III, and IV’, Grupo de Conjuntura IUPERJ (Rio de Janeiro, 1989Google Scholar and 1990), and ‘Crise politica, eleições e dinâmica partidária no Brasil: um balanço histórico’, Dados, Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 32, no. 3 (1989).

5 Data were taken from a national survey (PNAD) conducted by Brazil's census bureau, the IBGE, in 1988. At the time of this poll, the minimum wage was based on the Piso Nacional de Salários, worth Cz$18,960.00 (roughly US$60.00) in Sept. 1988.

6 Illiteracy rates reflect the State's greater or lesser capacity to respond to popular pressure for admission to the educational system. The Brazilian rate once exceeded 50% of the population as a whole but has been dropping since World War II, and in recent decades it appears to have stabilised at around 20%. Maria D'Alva Kinzo, however, suggests that throughout the nation's republican history at least one-third of the population has been denied the right to vote because of their illiteracy. See Kinzo, D. G., Oposição e autoritarismo (São Paulo, 1988)Google Scholar.

7 It is well known that for the last two decades voter turnout in the USA has been holding steady at about 50% of the electorate, which is slightly below the level noted in some European nations (but in the 1992 presidential elections, participation increased to nearly 55%).

8 Surveys conducted by the Instituto Data-Folha since the beginning of the transition have found these results. In the Political Culture survey those interviewed rejected the return of the military to power, and also expressed their respect for minority rights and a belief that the Executive branch has no legitimate right to interfere with either the Legislative branch, the press, unions, or parties. See my ‘Democratization and Mass Political Culture in Brazil’, in Kinzo, M. D. (ed.), Brazil: The Challenges of the (London, 1993), pp. 155–86Google Scholar.

9 Other polls, conducted by the Institute Data-Folha and IDESP outside the election period, show that around two-thirds of eligible voters (sometimes less, sometimes more) would still be interested in participating in elections even if voting were not mandatory.

10 Data from the Political Culture survey discredit interpretations that view dissatisfaction with the Nova República as a symptom of general disenchantment with democratic institutions and the democratic regime itself. For this reason, I have taken up arguments from my essay ‘Dilemas da consolidação democratica no Brasil’, in Moisés, J. A. and Albuquerque, J. A. G., Dilemas da consolidção da Democracia (Rio de Janeiro, 1989)Google Scholar. For a point of view differing somewhat from the one put forward here, see Diniz, E., ‘Transição, partidos e regimes políticos: algumas considerações’, in Camargo, A. and Diniz, E., Continuidade e mudança no Brasil da Nova República (São Paulo, 1989)Google Scholar.

11 See Lima, O. B. Jr, ‘As recentes eleições brasileiras: tendências e dilemas da interpretação’, in Sistema partidário e alternativas da oposição, Cadernos Conjuntura, no. 27, IUPERJ (1990)Google Scholar.

12 See Cerroni, U., Teoria do partido politica (São Paulo, 1982)Google Scholar.