Party switching in Brazil is an extremely interesting phenomenon. This work analyzes the phenomenon from two points of view. First, it tries to understand how collective actors, i.e., political parties, may use party switching as a way to increase power in parliament and in the electoral arena. Second, it speculates the reasons why an individual would affiliate themselves to a specific political party.
From Andréa Marcondes de Freitas and Patrick Silva
The work of Avelino et al (2011) proposes the G index, an important indicator to estimate the regional concentration of parliamentary votes in multi-member electoral districts. However, this indicator does not provide information about the votes a candidate received in sub-areas inside a district. Furthermore, by referring to an aggregate level of analysis - the district – it is not possible to disaggregate information to lower levels such as municipalities. Therefore, this work proposes the use of two alternative indicators: the Location Quotient (LQ) and the Horizontal Clustering (HC) in order to overcome these difficulties. These indices were applied to all congressmen elections from 1994 to 2010. The application serves the research objectives as it clearly identifies the location of the votes received by a candidate within the electoral district.
From Andreza Davidian.
Although much has been said about the distribution of politically appointed positions in the federal bureaucracy in Brazil, there is a lack of studies on the extent of this phenomenon, which political parties have gained more positions in office and in which areas, which bureaucratic agencies are insulated from partisan influence etc. This research employs, based on new data made available by the federal government in the ‘Transparency Portal’, the first quantitative analysis on politically appointed positions in Brazil. Data collection began in April 2010 and since then it has been complemented by interviewing members of the federal government.
The Brazilian literature tends to associate the quality of democracy to the organic character of parties regarding their connections to civil society. From this strong normative assumption, gloomy predictions about the consolidation of the Brazilian party system have emerged although there is a lack of empirical analysis to support these claims. This research project studies the implementation of the only mass political party in Brazil, PT (the Workers’ Party) according to literature, by analyzing the effects of grassroots organization on the electoral performance of the party. A review of the literature is also presented which combines the search for new explanatory models based less on "the social structure" and more on the dynamics of agents and players within the political process.
From Andreza Davidian.
Mini CV:
Davidian is currently a master student of the Graduate Program in Political Science from the University of São Paulo (USP). In 2010 she obtained a degree in Social Sciences from the same university. Since 2007 she has been a permanent researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM/CEBRAP).
Lattes Curriculum
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Mini CV:
Freitas received her Master degree in Political Science from University of São Paulo and is currently a doctoral student at the same institution. She is a permanent researcher of Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning) in the research project "Political Institutions, Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations and Government Capacity". She is also a researcher at the Center for Comparative and International Studies at USP (USP-NECI). Her fields of interests are Coalitions, Executive-Legislative Relations, Political Parties, Elections, Party Migration.
Lattes Curriculum
Researches
Publications
