Allies or markets? What determines the ideological position of Brazilian political parties? 1

Allies or markets? What determines the ideological position of Brazilian political parties? 1 Soraia Marcelino Vieira soraiamarc@yahoo.com.br PhD candidate in Political Science at the Institute for Social and Political Studies (IESP-UERJ). Funded with a scholarship from CNPq. André Luiz Coelho andreluizrj@gmail.com PhD candidate in Political Science at the Institute for Social and Political Studies (IESP- UERJ). Professor at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio) and the LaSalle Superior Institute RJ. Introduction The aim of this paper is to make a brief historical analysis of political polarization in Brazil since the early 1990s based on a bibliographical review and the analysis of data from Timothy Power s surveys 2. For such, we relate the importance of government coalitions and the process of implementation of the market reforms and their ulterior implications for the oscillation in the polarization among the main political forces in the country. We also recur to some concepts from the coalitions literature and about the relationship between economy and the ideological positioning of the government, due to its theoretical usefulness as good instruments to think the Brazilian case. Amorim Neto (2006) highlights that it is possible to observe great institutional variation among presidential systems in Latin America. The works of Shugart (1992), Jones (1995), Sartori (1997), Carey (2003) and Mainwaring (2003) also attest that the interaction between the president s ideological inclination, the party system and the economic conditions reflect a diversity in the patterns of government. These, in their turn, could be associated to the political and economic performance of the American countries. One of the main issues debated in contemporary Political Science is the difficult institutional operability that could exist in presidential multiparty systems: how could a president govern without his party obtaining the majority of legislative seats? 1 The authors would like to thank Guilherme Simões Reis, Natalia Maciel, Adriane Gouvêa and Clayton M. Cunha Filho for the valuable comments and critics to the first versions of this paper. Its final result, however, is of our entire responsibility. Translated from Portuguese by Clayton M. Cunha Filho. 2 Timothy Power conducts since the 1990s a survey of each legislature, with a sample from Brazilian representatives in which themes such as democracy, ideological positioning, economy and others are asked.

In what concerns the impact of economic factors over the ideological positioning of governments, we retake the discussion of Layman, Carsey & Horovitz (2006: 85), that while analyzing the United States case defend that in periods of conflict displacement, new issues emerge and substitute the previous ones, characterizing the so called party realignment 3. Observing the Brazilian case in light of this theoretical frame, one of the hypotheses from this paper indicates the occurrence of a possible realignment by the end of the 1980s and beginnings of the 1990s, representing a new setting for the rightwing that took as its main objective the implementation of a broad spectrum of political and economic reforms of neoliberal content. The focus of this paper is the ideological position of the Worker s Party (PT), the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement s Party (PMDB) 4 in light of the government coalitions and the macroeconomic constraints. These parties were chosen because they are among the most important in the period after the 1979 reform 5. PT and PSDB claim since their foundation to belong to the left-wing and the PMDB has remained as the center party, the tip of the balance. All three remained fairly close to each other during the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. However, they started to drift apart since the presidential election of 1994, when the PSDB became the incumbent and the PT the opposition, a situation that inverted itself since the 2002 elections, when the PT acceded to the Republic s Presidency. The PMDB remained at the center of political spectrum and participated in the both the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luis Inácio Lula da Silva coalitions. The paper is divided into five sections, besides this introduction and the final remarks. In the first part, we conduct a bibliographic review of the government coalition issue and after that we present the Brazilian coalitions settings from the Collor de Mello government up to the first Lula administration. In the third part, we discuss the macroeconomic issue. In the fourth, we present the trajectory of the three parties and in the fifth and last, their ideological positions. Government coalitions a bibliographic review On the recent literature about coalitions, several authors sustain that divided majorities make governability and public policy formulation difficult, once the opposition forces would possess a veto power capable of blocking the 3 According to Layman, Carsey and Horovitz, periods of party change are characterized by the so called conflict displacement" consists in the emergence of a new theme or of a new dimension that is transversal to the previous terms of the party polarization. Sundquist (apud. Layman, Carsey e Horovitz, 2006: 85) argues that the characteristic that identifies a party realignment is the displacement or substitution of a conflict by another. In analogous terms Schattschneider (apud Layman, Carsey e Horovitz, 2006: 85) affirms that an eventual change of a previous party alignment towards a new one means that the previous cleavage must be put down especially if the new conflict superposes itself upon a more important theme. For more information on the theme, see Schattcheneider (1960), Sundquist (1983), Carmines & Stimson (1989), Clubb et al. (1990), Miller & Schofield (2003). 4 A table with all the names and acronyms of the parties analyzed is available at the annex. 5 In 1979 the Military Regime reinstituted a multiparty system with the aim of fragmenting the opposition. In this reform, all parties had to add the letter P at the beginning of their names.

approval of the Executive s measures. In this sense, Linz (1994) argues that the parliamentary system would guarantee an increased durability for governments as compared to presidential systems and Mainwaring (1993) sustains that a presidential multiparty system could make cooperation relationships between the Executive and the Legislative difficult. Analyzing minority governments, Cheibub (2002) draws attention to the shortage of works dealing with legislative coalition formation under presidential systems. According to the author, what would really matter for the survival of regimes is not the number of parties or the coincidence of Executive and Legislative elections, but mainly the distribution of preferences among parties, or their degree of polarization (especially the existence of three relatively equal political forces). Since then, several scholars have dedicated themselves to the coalition issue in order to acknowledge its importance and impact over democratic multiparty presidential regimes. In the analysis of the Southern Cone, for example, this difficult combination between presidentialism and multiparty democracy does not seem to affect the process of democratic transition and consolidation. Such factors are all the more relevant if we consider the democratic reinstitutionalization period in the context of the structural reforms of the 1990s. In that context, several presidents from the region formed coalitions with the aim of securing stable legislative majorities, affording certain degrees of security and predictability to the set of social and economic actors. For Chasquetti (2001), the phenomenon must be considered as a political response from each political system to basically similar problems of governability. In other words, the government coalitions were the product of the search for alternatives to the problems derived from the combination of presidential regimes and multiparty systems. Chasquetti s (2001) proposal was to evince that presidential and multiparty systems governed by coalition majorities are effective politicalinstitutional formats for the maintenance of democratic stability. In the same manner, multiparty presidential systems without coalitions would be the really problematic ones. According to the author, the majority of the arguments evoked about presidential system s apparent difficulty to stimulate or enable coalitions would be questionable or even wrong. In this sense, Mainwaring s (1993) argument 6 would only keep its validity if we consider only the multiparty systems where the presidents do not develop cooperation strategies. This would amount to say that the most problematic political-institutional combination for democracy would be, without a doubt, the presidential regime combined with a multiparty system without coalitions. Considering the political arrangement engendered by coalitions, we may affirm that the combination between presidential systems and multiparty regimes is fit for democracy when presidents are capable of forming government coalitions of majority character. Negretto (2006) claims that the conflict potential in a presidential regime increases when the president s party loses support both from the median representative and the representative who defines the veto situation, and, simultaneously, a coalition cabinet that sustains a legislative majority is not formed in its favor. Thus, one of the most important elements to determine the 6 The author criticizes the presidential system, more specifically under multiparty systems, for hindering the cooperative relationship between the Executive and the Legislative.

presidential capacity to implement policies would be the ideological structure of the party system. The more fragmented it is, the more difficult the parliamentary agreements would be (Downs, 1957). Therefore, analogously to the other authors cited before, the approval of Executive initiatives would have a higher rate of success in more moderate political systems, where there is more possibility for consensus between the opposition and the government party, once that both are closer to political center. For Jímenez Badillo (2007) 7, the coalitions among parties are favored when there is a short ideological distance among them. This way, the median party would be the one to guide the voting. Coalitions in Brazil In this section, we discuss the formation of coalitions in Brazil in more specificity, showing which parties were part of each president s legislative support base since redemocratization. As it will be demonstrated below, a significant part of the literature claims that we can frequently observe the formation of coalitions in Brazil. As in other countries, Brazil presents a multiparty system that favors the formation of minority governments. As a consequence and with the aim of enhancing its governability, the ruling party seeks to broaden its parliamentary base of support through coalitions. We observe basically two types of coalitions: the electoral (generally more restricted) and the governmental (most of the times an amplified coalition). We can observe, too, the ad hoc coalitions that occur when the government seeks support from parties that are outside its support base in order to approve some specific project. In the 1989 presidential election, the first direct election since the end of the military regime, was the only one in recent Brazilian history, postdemocratization, that showed many single candidates (twenty two) and only one electoral coalition, formed by the PT, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB). 8 For the run-up election the PT increased its coalition with parties defeated in the first polls, gathering support from PMDB, the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) and the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). The PSDB recommended support for Lula as a progressive option. As for the other candidate, Collor, he gathered support from business groups, but not other parties and he won the elections nevertheless. The Collor government started facing two big challenges: the economic crisis and the lack of support from the parties. After an electoral victory without coalition, the candidate needed to search for allies in order to form a support base. Between 1990 and 1992, Collor had four ministerial cabinets 9 : 7 Jímenez Badillo uses the representatives ideological self-definition to build a party systems polarization indicator. 8 A table with all party acronyms is given at the annex. 9 We understand the parties in the cabinet to be part of the government s support base, once the distribution of posts is one of the government s weapons to negotiate for support.

Table 1- Collor de Melo administration s coalitions Period Parties 03/1990 to 10/1990 PMDB, PFL, PRN 10/1990 to 01/1992 PFL, PDS, PRN 01/1992 to 04/1992 PFL, PDS 04/1992 to 10/1992 PFL, PDS, PSDB, PTB, PL Source: Amorim Neto, 2006 After a long period of crisis, filled with corruption scandals, coalitional instability and massive popular protests, the president was impeached in October 1992. After Collor s impeachment, his vice-president, Itamar Franco, was sworn into office and governed until Fernando Henrique Cardoso took office in January 1995. Itamar managed to form a broader and more stable coalition (PMDB-PFL-PSDB-PTB-PDT-PSB) as compared to the ones under Collor. Some changes did happen, however: in May 1993, the PDT left the coalition and in November of the same year the PSB left the government, being substituted by the Partido Popular (PP) 10. During Itamar s last year in office his support base was formed by PMDB-PFL-PSDB-PP. Itamar s government also faced economic problems. In May 1993 he named Fernando Henrique Cardoso for the Finance Ministry, which together with a team of neo-structuralists or inertialist economists implemented the Real Plan that, unlike all the previous economic packages, managed to control inflation that presented astronomic dimensions since the beginnings of the 1980s. Table 2 - Itamar Franco administration s coalitions Period Parties 10/1992 a 08/1993 PFL,PTB, PMDB, PSDB, PSB 08/1993 a 01/1994 PFL, PTB, PMDB, PSDB, PP 01/1994 a 12/1994 PFL, PMDB, PSDB, PP Source: Argelina Figueiredo s database 11 The Real Plan s success guaranteed Fernando Henrique Cardoso s electoral victory in 1994. For that election, the PSDB allied itself with two rightwing parties, PFL and PTB. The government coalition (1995-1998) added two additional parties, thus being formed by PFL-PTB-PMDB-PPB, which guaranteed majority in both legislative chambers. Fernando Henrique s second administration, 1999-2002, started with the same support base from the first, but throughout the office dissidences between Antonio Carlos Magalhães (PFL/BA) and Jader Barbalho (PMDB/PA) weakened the coalition. The dispute between both politicians led to Antonio Carlos Magalhães resignation 12, which undermined PSDB s alliance with the PFL and 10 From now on, when we refer to PP, we're dealing with the currently existing party, which is the former PPB, heir to the PDS that was, by its turn, heir to the ARENA. 11 The authors would like to thank Argelina Cheibub Figueiredo for the access to the database on government coalitions in Brazil. 12 The dispute between the two became personal and culminated in the scandal of the fraud of the Senate s electronic register panel.

led it to leave the coalition. By the end of the second year the PTB also broke up with the government. Table 3 - Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration s coalitions Period Parties 01/1995 a 04/1996 PSDB, PFL, PMDB, PTB 04/1996 a 12/1998 PSDB, PFL, PMDB, PTB, PPB 01/1999 a 03/2002 PSDB, PFL, PMDB, PPB 03/2002 a 12/2002 PMDB, PSDB, PPB Source: Argelina Figueiredo s database In sum, Fernando Henrique s government kept the coalition s stability during his first term, but passed through important changes in the second. The main alterations observed in both Cardoso s coalitions were the entrance of the PTB in 1998 and the exit of PFL in 2002. Lula s government (2002) started with an alliance between PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PDT, PPS and PV. The first substantial modification occurred with the exit of PDT and the entrance of PMDB ( a privileged ally for every government, according to Figueiredo, 2008:50) by the start of 2004. Since 2005, the alliance lost support from left-wing parties. At the first semester, during the so-called mensalão crisis, the PPS left the government, being followed by PV. At the same year, the coalition received support from the PP (former PPB). Figueiredo (2008:50) argues that, in its first coalition the government sailed through tranquil waters, and despite being a minority coalition, it was composed by a bigger number of parties. Table 4 Lula administration s coalitions Period Parties 01/2003 a 01/2004 PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PDT, PPS, PV 01/2004 a 01/2005 PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PPS, PV, PMDB 02/2005 a 05/2005 PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PV, PMDB 05/2005 a 07/2005 PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PMDB 07/2005 a 01/2007* PT, PL, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PP, PMDB 02/2007* a 03/2007 INTERIM** 04/2007 a 12/2010 PT, PCdoB, PSB, PTB, PP, PMDB, PR 13, PRB 14, PDT Source: Argelina Figueiredo s database 13 Fusion between PRONA and PL. 14 Party into which vice-president José Alencar transferred himself after its name change (from Municipal Renewal Party PMR to Brazilian Republican Party PRB) in March 03, 2006. This party joined the ministerial cabinet only on June 06, 2007, with the creation of the Long Term Planning Department, through a Provisory Measure that, after being rejected, led to the creation of the Extraordinary Ministry for Strategic Affairs, on October 04, 2007.

PT s broad alliance included both parties to its left and to its right. According to Figueiredo (2005:57) The ideological heterogeneity of the government s coalition has been highlighted as a destabilizing factor for the government. What we may observe, however, is that even with the conflicts stemming from the ideological differences in Lula s administration, the relationship between the allied parties was administered, so that even with divergences the coalition stood relatively stable during his eight years of office. Since Lula we may observe that government coalitions started to encompass parties from different sides of the ideological spectrum. As in the political game it is necessary to give on one point in order to take in another, the fact that a left-wing party, once in office, allied with right-wing parties, on one hand leads it to broaden its base of support, but on the other induces it to cede in some points, leading to a bigger moderation. After discussing the literature over coalitions and dedicating the article s first part to describe how this phenomenon occurs in Brazil, in the following section we show the importance of macroeconomic issues for the definition of the ideological positioning of political parties, again dedicating special attention to the Brazilian case with the aim of presenting the trajectory of the three parties analyzed in this paper. The importance of macroeconomics for the ideological positioning of parties With the aim of contextualizing the focus intended for this paper, it is necessary to make a brief analysis of the debate over the relationship between government and economy. Boix (1998) defends that different parties have different preferences related to the managing of the economic cycle and that the economic constraints may condition the parties positioning in certain situations. The party s ideological orientation will define the economic policy adopted by the government during the period in which it leads it. When in government, the party faces a series of challenges concerning both the internal and external economy. Faced with this scenario, it adopts a series of measures aimed at solving such challenges. The response adopted by the government is intrinsically linked to the ideological orientation of the ruling coalition, but the party strategy is strongly affected by structural and institutional variables (Boix, 1998). Despite having certain macroeconomic preferences, the party is strongly constrained by the institutional settings under which it operates (Boix 1998: 226). Sharing a similar idea, Garrett (1998) believes that the party s ideological orientation, as well as economic factors, influences decision-making. The author sustains that globalization presents a different context from that verified until the end of the 1970s. In that scenario, the left-wing parties could opt for the positioning they would take. Contrary to what many researchers claim, Garrett (1998) argues that globalization could open a window of opportunities for the left, that it could strengthen it if it managed to profit from the opportunities and administer the new challenges faced. This diagnosis notwithstanding, when we observe the European left-wing parties positioning in the 1980s, it is possible to notice that most left-wing governments diluted their program, adopting a position closer to the center and the right instead of affirming a strictu sensu left-wing stance. Most of the times, it was due to external macroeconomic constraints. We can cite the cases of France and Spain where social-democrat

governments ascended to power in the 1980s and, despite having tried to implement a progressive program, were constrained to back off and implement a more limited agenda. The 1980s were marked by the ascension of neoliberalism. The election of the trend s champions in England and the United States, associated to the Left s difficulties in solving the impeding crisis strengthened the idea that the State did not constitute a redeeming formula anymore, and would rather be considered an essential part of the problem (Cruz, 2007:75). Neoliberalism is not, in fact, a theoretical innovation. In a certain way, it is a return to the old market faith. Nevertheless, the contemporary version was sustained in an analytical apparatus that constituted a significant modernization of justifications over why the market should be trusted. Neoliberalism s defenders relied on the apparent economic success observed in England and US and the bad performance of social democratic governments. In this context, by the end of the 1980s a meeting was held in Washington, D.C. with the aim of establishing the measures developing and underdeveloped countries should adopt to control their economies. The political-economic project preached by the Washington Consensus 15 in the beginning of the 1990s was the victor in the dispute between statism vs. market capitalism (even if such victory, as known, had an expiration date). Intellectuals, politicians and orthodox bureaucrats advocated in favor of this recipe, in a broad right-wing consensus. On the other hand, the left took an opposing position, radicalizing polarization (this polarization weakened after ascension of left-wing governments in the region in the 2000s). We must, however, make a proviso, in that the process of implementation of such reforms did not occur in a similar way in the region s countries and was far from being unanimous. Latin America s recent history shows that it was precisely the internal political dynamic of each country that determined the deepening or not of structural adjustment. While in some countries the opposition could gather strength or was weakened, in others the action of opposition parties was determinant to block the implementation of broader reforms 16. In the Brazilian case, the reform process started to be designed during Sarney s administration and came to force during Collor de Mello s term in office (Urani, Giambiagi & Reis, 2004), being continued during Cardoso s administration. The reforms happened in a context of financial fragility external debt crisis and high inflation and external constraints, the international mechanisms assumed a stance of demanding indebted countries with public account problems for austere measures to correct the situation. The severe fiscal crisis and the external strangling in Brazil, caused by the debt and State crisis faced since the 1980s, brought up discussions over the 15 Fiori (1995) characterizes the Washington Consensus as a convergence program or the homogenization of the economic policies of Latin American countries, designed by bureaucrats from Washington and international agencies, that combined fiscal and monetary austerity with market deregulation, financial liberalization, commercial opening, privatizations and the elimination of all kinds of protective or discriminatory barriers against foreign capitals. 16 The case of the Broad Front in Uruguay may be considered paradigmatic as it pertains a leftwing party that developed mainly in opposition to the traditional Colorado and National parties, both of conservative and more recently neoliberal ideological stance. The growth of the Broad Front pushed traditional parties further to the right, terminating their center-left fractions both through incorporation of their candidates and by conquest of their electorate (Reis, 2011; 13; apud. Moreira, 2004, 2006).

State s role. The developmental State, taken as the solution-state, became a problem to the challenges to be faced (Motta, 2000). In the end of the 1980s, the Brazilian economic elite started to question and confront the State s intervention. In this context, there started to emerge positions defending the adoption of the recipe proposed by multilateral agencies and liberalizing policies as the answer to such problems: State reform, privatizations and fiscal controls, among others (Sallum Jr, 2003). In the context of neoliberal reforms there was a realignment among Brazilian parties from the new polarizations: on one side, there were the parties that came close to neoliberal ideas, PRN, PL, PDC, PDS, PFL 17 and PSDB, and on the other the adepts of national-development, PMDB, PDT and PT (Sallum Jr, 2003), that is, in this moment left and right organized themselves around these two economic projects: neoliberalism and national-development. Since the moment PSDB entered the governing coalition in 1993 and, more clearly, since it took the presidency s office, it distanced itself from the left and reached for the right-wing. The adoption of neoliberal economic policies is the main indicator of this displacement. With this movement by the PSDB, it is possible to observe a greater polarization between the party and the PT. However, when candidating for the presidency in 2002 and when taking office in 2003, the PT moved closer to the center of the political spectrum. This displacement reduced the distance between both (as demonstrated in graph 1), but still the distance between them remains: the PSDB has consolidated itself on the center-right, while the PT consolidated on the center-left. When PT took the presidency s office in 2002, however, the international economic conditions had already been altered. Facing the neoliberal implementations failure, and more specifically the measures preached by the Washington Consensus, multilateral agencies changed their position and went back into thinking the State s role as an important mediating agent not only of social-political relations, but also economic ones. Some demands were kept, however, such as the need to control the State s accounts and maintain economic stability. In face of these conditions, the Worker s Party altered its political agenda and initiated a trajectory towards the center. Two measures signaled the party member s conformability: the alliance with PL, a businessmen party from the right-wing; and the Letter to the Brazilian People, issued by the party, in which it pledged to keep the commitments taken by the previous government with multilateral agencies. One of the literature s suggestions to analyze the three main Brazilian parties trajectory, and that could even be used for the region as a whole, could be taken from Poole & Rosenthal (1997), that present party realignment as an essential change in one or more of fundamental issues of a country s political scenario. When the perceived change is not deemed to be so strong, the authors describe it as a disturbance, a perturbation. That said, it remains to be seen if what happened in South America in the beginning of the 1990s, with the move from a great part of legislators towards neoliberal policies could be defined as a party realignment or as only a disturbance, perturbation. According to this literature, changes would initially occur in the masses forming the political parties base of support and would, then, influence the behavior of political leaders, characterizing the political realignment or 17 PFL s presidential candidate in 1989, Aureliano Chaves sought to keep a nationaldevelopmentalist discourse in a moment in which his party showed an increasing neoliberal bent (Vieira, 2006).

perturbation. Therefore, changes would occur primordially from a bottom-up direction, that is, from the population to the political parties. If we consider the implementation of market reforms in the South American countries, however, we could hardly claim that it happened that way, and on the contrary would be inclined to say it happened the other way around, coming almost exclusively from the higher instances towards the masses (even if a great part of them never adhered to such project). Therefore, an analysis of the alleged political realignment in the region must necessarily take in consideration its specificities. The trajectories of PT, PMDB and PSDB The discussion over political polarization and party groupings over the right/left-wing axis has been fairly developed in Brazil with a special focus on parliamentary activity, although there are also works aiming at the electorate s polarization, such as Singer (2000), Kinzo (2005), Braga Paiva & Pimentel (2007) and Veiga (2007). In this paper, we seek to retake the debate over parliamentary polarization and analyze the position of the PT, PMDB and PSDB under the influence of the macroeconomic conjuncture and the governments coalitions. We agree with the thesis that the Brazilian party system is going through an increasing institutionalization process (Santos, 2008; Rodrigues, 2002). We also assume that parties can be classified as left, center and right-wing 18. From these, we consider that it is possible to analyze the parties positions seeking to assess the impact that external constraints, especially over the macroeconomic conjuncture, may exert over the parties ideological positions. And in order to allow for the formation of majority governments, it became necessary to form broad coalitions, of a frequently heterogeneous nature, as has been observed in contemporary Brazilian politics. Sérgio Abranches (1998) was the first to analyze Brazilian coalitions as a fundamental political arrangement for the maintenance of national governability and political-democratic stability. The author points to the institutional fluidity during the analyzed period, the 1980s, exacerbated with the formation and later developments of the National Constituent Assembly. The author characterizes the Brazilian political regime in its republican phase as a coalition presidential system; the term is a synthesis of the settings of a system in which coalitions and party alliances are the rule, not to mention the uncommon association between proportional representation, multiparty democracy and presidential 18 Recent literature studying the Brazilian political parties has demonstrated that there is coherence in the Brazilian parties positions and that it is possible to classify them along a left/right-wing ideological spectrum. In more recent studies, the parties showed a clearer ideological profile, with stronger scores for party fidelity and discipline. Figueiredo and Limongi (2001) found the existence of three ideological blocks: right-wing PDS/PPR, PFL (currently Democrats) and PTB, center PMDB and PSDB and left-wing PT and PDT, the authors verified if the parties from the same ideological block voted clearly in a similar manner. Santos (2008) agrees that it is possible to group parties in three blocks, and presents the following classification: right-wing PFL, PP, PTB, PL, PRONA, PST, PDS -. Center PMDB and PSDB -, and left-wing PT, PDT, PSB, PCdoB, PMN, PPS and PV. In a more recent study, Timothy Power and Cesar Zucco (2011) present an ideological locations map of parties based in specialized bibliographical research and the analysis of surveys conducted with legislators. From the bibliographic analysis we found the following party groups: to the left, PCdoB, PT, PSTU, PCB, PDT, PSOL and PSB. At the center PSDB and PMDB and to the right, PL, PTB and PFL.

system. In light of this setting, the president is pressed to organize the administration based in a broad composition of party and regional forces. The major risk for the coalition s performance lies in the State s institutional set for decision, negotiation and implementation of policies. That is because, as the potential for conflict is too high, the tendency is to take out from the minimal program, or the alliance s basic compromise, the most divisive issues, leaving them aside for other phases of the decision process. The political pact for the administration s composition is made viable, but there is an overload of the decision agenda, at the government stage, properly said, with conflictive and non-negotiated issues (Abranches, 1988). In fact, although it forces parties to a constant process of negotiation, coalitions are fundamental for the maintenance of political stability and to make governability possible. As previously said, we must have in mind that there are two types of coalitions: the electoral coalition, more restrict, ant the government coalition, which is broader. Once elected, the party must seek to broaden its support by aggregating other parties to its support base. Despite the existence of many parties in Brazil, there is consensus in the literature that, since the 1994 elections, the party system is dominated by four strong parties PT, PMDB, PSDB and PFL - and three or four middle-sized parties PP, PDT, PTB and PL (Rodrigues, 2002 and Santos, 2008). Among the four strong parties, two have stood out as the main national competitors and antagonistic forces: PT and PSDB. And the PMDB has played as tip of the scale, participating in government coalitions from these two parties. PMDB is the heir to the old MDB. After bipartisanship it fragmented itself and from its ranks were formed the PP 19, PTB and PDT. The party remained an important political force, after having conquered the sympathy of electors as the opposition to the military regime 20. It remained with a significant number of legislative representatives until 1986, when it obtained majority in the House of Representatives, the Senate and state governments due to the success of the Cruzado Plan. However, after that victory the Sarney administration changed the mentioned plan substantially, as it was already demonstrating signs of frailty months before the elections. This policy switch 21 was punished in the municipal elections of 1988, when the party began a declining electoral trajectory. The PMDB was located at the center, but it is also possible to notice its drift to the right since 1992, as we will see in the next topic. The party is composed basically by businessmen, followed by whitecollar workers. The party s cadres are formed mainly by citizens of medium and medium-high wealth. Which, alongside its professional profile, would put it next to the right-wing parties (Rodrigues, 2002). After supporting pro-market reforms 19 Here we are referring to the PP that was formed after the 1979 reform. It disappeared still in 1980s, when it merged again with PMDB. 20 See Vieira, 2006. 21 The 1986 election is considered a policy switch once the fake success of the Cruzado Plan guaranteed PMDB s electoral advantage in the polls. The Plan, that had already shown signs of fragility, was kept until the 15 November polls and, on the day after a stabilization plan was announce, the Cruzado III, which consisted in a fiscal package that produced an immediate and sharp inflationary shock (Vieira, 2006: 62).

conducted during Fernando Henrique Cardoso s administration, the party showed itself favorable to them. The PT arose after the first phase of the party system reform of 1979 as a left-wing party with a trade-unionist base and, according to Kinzo (1993) constituted a case of mass party. The PSDB founders remained inside the cadres of PMDB until 1988, when due to divergences during the Constituent Assembly s works a left-wing faction from the PMDB joined dissidents from other five parties (PSB, PFL, PTB, PCdoB and PSC) and formed the new center-left party. There are elements marking differences between the PT and PSDB since their foundation, among which the parties social compositions is foremost. According to Duverger (1980), the first could be considered a mass party, while the second would be a cadre party. According to Rodrigues (2002), the PSDB s dominant composition results from the alliance between a sector from the high intelligentsia with an important, but minority, sector from the businessmen. The PT, on its turn, is composed mainly by intellectual factions, teachers from all levels of the education sector, and a faction of former trade-unionists from the working and middle classes that is present in it, but not on the PSDB. Among the main common elements between both parties their origins in São Paulo and their roots in sectors of the intellectuals stand out. According to Barboza Filho (1995): This intellectual composition from São Paulo is fundamental for the understanding of the PT s nature and the PSDB s profile. These two parties constitute the great novelty of our party system precisely for being the bearers, competing between themselves, of premises buried for decades by the prevailing conservative modernizing alliance. They have more in common than both would like to admit. Besides this antagonism to tradition, the resource to ethics for a renewed denunciation of politics tissue and its games constitutes another shared characteristic, as well as the permanent mobilization of a specific knowledge, covered in university-originated rationality (Barboza Filho, 1995: 124). Traditionally, members from PT and PSDB both positioned themselves to the left of the ideological spectrum, although the PT had always stood to the left of the PSDB, that came closer to the center. The PMDB, by its turn, stood as a party of the center. Observing studies about party positioning Kinzo (1993), Zucco & Power (2009), among others it is possible to note that, by the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s, PT and PSDB were left-of-center. PSDB kept its left-leaning position until it joined the Itamar Franco administration in 1993, occupying the Finance Ministry. The party s position change was reaffirmed when it entered an electoral coalition with PFL and PTB, a center-right coalition that became clearer after it took the presidential office in 1994. Since then the party s position has gotten closer and closer to the rightwing until it left office in 2002. When it entered the Executive in 1994, the party was faced with the pressure from external constraints and opted for the fulfilling

of the international agencies agenda 22 to restore the country s credibility, control the inflation and adjust the public accounts. The electoral coalition of then candidate Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1994 was composed by PSDB, PFL and PTB. For government coalition s formation two more parties were added: PMDB and PPB, guaranteeing the majority of the House of Representatives and Senate, giving the government security for the approval of constitutional amendments aiming at the implementation of orthodox reforms. When the PSDB took the presidency office, the PT established itself as the main opposition party and with a markedly left-wing discourse. However, during the electoral campaign of 2002, after issuing the Letter to the Brazilian People the PT demonstrated its disposition to tone down its program concerning macroeconomic issues. As previously said, the PT arose in the leftwing camp as a mass party and kept its ideological position since its foundation until the presidential election of 2002, when it is possible to observe a change in direction towards the center of the political spectrum (as may be observed in graph 1 below). In 2002, PT formed a broad electoral coalition in which it added left-wing parties such as PCB, PCdoB and a right-wing party, PL. However, after taking office, Lula incorporated to its coalition parties from different sides of the ideological spectrum: initially came PDT, PPS, PTB, PSB, PV and, later, PMDB. Since its first election, the party took a much more centrist stance (Power & Zucco, 2009). This cabinet formation suffered a few changes during the eight years PT controlled the presidency under Lula (parties came in and out of the coalition). This setting shows the party s option to build a catch all coaltion 23 in order to guarantee governability and broaden its room to maneuver. At the start of its first term it was possible to observe a cabinet composed mostly by PT militants. However, with the passing of time, some posts were changed in order to incorporate other parties to the cabinet formation. Although it was a coalition that incorporated parties from different positions of the ideological spectrum and in broad lines kept with the PSDB s administration economic policies, the party implemented a series of advances in what concerns social policy. The position of the parties One of the most important elements to determine the presidential capacity for policy implementation would be the ideological structure of the party system. The more fragmented it is, the more difficult parliamentary agreements would be due to vulnerability. Jímenez Badillo (2007) understands polarization as the distance or proximity perceived by political elites (in general, members of Parliament), in terms of how near or how far they realize themselves to be from other parties, considering mainly their electoral platforms and the parties ideological positions. 22 It is important to notice that although the government kept with a good part of the neoliberal agenda (market deregulation, economic opening, privatization ) the measures adopted in Brazil were less orthodox and far-reaching than in other Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Chile. 23 The term catch all is used for parties that cease to direct they appeal to a specific group and start to focus in a broader public. This phenomenon could be observed in several European parties after the war.

To think about the parties ideological position implies thinking, also, on the existing structural and institutional constraints. Electoral and government coalitions and the external context exert significant influence in the position of parties, once that in government the party must try to conciliate with the forces involved in the political process and must position itself in face of external constraints. Therefore we may argue that it is easier to defend a clear ideological position when one is in opposition. The claim is that, once in office, the party s room to maneuver is reduced, once that in order to approve projects and enforce policies it needs support from the majority. As generally the administration s support base is insufficient to reach the required support, the Executive must cede in some points in order to advance in others (Silva & Vieira, 2006). This happens especially when under external pressure for the implementation of macroeconomic adjustments, cases in which it must give up a favored agenda in order to implement a possible agenda, and this option, most of the times, leads to the party s displacement in the ideological spectrum. This argument may explain the PSDB s movement to the right during the years in which it occupied the Federal Executive, as well as the movement from the left towards the center by the PT after its election to the presidency. Graph 1 below reveals this moderation process, in the case of PT that came closer to the median, and the change in position in the cases of PMDB, that came closer to the right, and the PSDB, that was to the left of the median by the end of the 1980s, but moved to its right and drifted away since it entered office. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Graph 1 History of Ideological Positions* PT, PMDB and PSDB PT PMDB PSDB Median 0 1990 1993 1997 2001 2005 2009 Source: Own elaboration from survey data in: POWER, Timothy; ZUCCO, Cesar (eds) O Congresso por ele mesmo. Editora da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, 2011. *0 determines extreme-left position and 10 extreme-right. These data refer to the position attributed by legislators from other parties, and not by parliamentary self-classification. As we may observe in the figure above, PT and PSDB are to the left of the median during the early 1990s. Since 1993, when PSDB joins the ruling coalition, a process of polarization starts between them: the PSDB reaches for the center-right while the PT establishes its position in the left. This picture

changes since the 2002 election, when PT and PSDB move towards the center. PMDB remains to the right of the median, moving away from it particularly since 2001 and, although allying with the PT, it remains ideologically closer to the PSDB 24. As previously stated, the differences in the parties positions are less clear in the 1980s, since we were in a moment of party accommodations, and they have intensified in the 1990s due to the maturing of the system, the participation in government and the options taken towards the economic setting, especially relating to the adoption of neoliberal policies. From the observation of Graph 1 we may see that the PSDB, that was to the left of the median during its first six years (end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s) outstrips the median towards the right since 1993. During Fernando Henrique Cardoso s first administration the PSDB finds itself still close to the median, but this distance increases since its second administration. From its election in 2002, and more specifically after the formation of its second coalition in 2004 25, the PT reaches for the center and stays close to the median, but always to its left. The PMDB makes a similar trajectory to the PSDB, but less steeply so. From 1997 its position remains practically unaltered, even after joining PT s coalition. The median moves towards the left still by end of PSDB s administration, having little variation since then. We notice that the PT is the closest party to the Congress median. The median gradually moves away from the right since 2001. Graph 2 PT, PMDB and PSDB s parliamentary group at the moment of inauguration 300 250 200 150 100 PT PMDB PSDB 50 0 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 Source: Own elaboration from data found in http://jaironicolau.iesp.uerj.br/banco2004.html and www.tse.gov.br 24 Figueiredo and Limongi, 2001, analyzing nominal votes, observe that the PSDB acts more cohesively when voting with the right-wing. 25 For more details, see Table 4 with Lula s administration coalitions.

According to Graph 2, representing the PT, PMDB and PSDB s parliamentary group at the time of inauguration, we may notice that soon after redemocratization, in 1985, PT and PSDB were parties with low representativeness in the Legislative, while the PMDB could be considered the country s main party. However, in the following elections, we may observe the growth of both PT and PSDB, that took the role of protagonists in the Brazilian party system for heading the last five government coalitions, as well as fall in PMDB. PMDB, the great victor in the 1986 elections, started to share space with other equally competitive parties in the Legislative, although it still kept the majority in the House of Representatives in the 1990 and 1994 elections. In 1998 it lost majority to PFL and PSDB, figuring as the third biggest group and remaining in that position in 2002. It went back to being the biggest parliamentary group in 2006, with a difference of three seats to the second place. Another characteristic trait to be noticed is the clear reduction in the number of PSDB representatives after the end of FHC s administration, specially marked between the 1998 and 2002 legislatures. The same way, it is possible to notice and increase in the PT s parliamentary group with Lula s first election in the same period of the PSDB s fall (1998-2002). In office since 2002, the PT seems to have stabilized its representation while it remains in office, while the opposite occurs with PSDB. On the other hand, it looks like the fall in the PMDB s number of representatives stabilized from the moment the party joined a government coalition still in Itamar Franco s administration. Thus, we notice that in the Brazilian party system the party that conquers the Presidency obtains a considerable increase in the number of parliamentary seats, occurring exactly the opposite for the party that leaves the Executive, clearly showing the importance of considering that the polarization between PT and PSDB may also be read as the polarization between being or not in office. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the PMDB is the tip of scale for the party holding the Executive also seems to be confirmed, since the party managed to stabilize its seats in the Legislative since it started to be part of the government coalitions (with the exception of Lula s first coalition), independently of the ideological position of the president s party. Final Remarks In this paper we sought to reflect upon the influence macroeconomic issues and government coalitions can exert over the ideological position of the three main Brazilian political parties: PT, PMDB and PSDB. Recapitulating, the PT was born in the left-wing camp and consolidated as the biggest left-leaning party in Brazil, until it took the Federal Executive office and moved towards the center of the political spectrum. While the PSDB reached more and more for the right-wing throughout Fernando Henrique Cardoso s administration, the PT consolidated its position as the main opposing party. PT s entrance in government in 2002 and its subsequent inclination towards the center led it to occupy the center-left, a place claimed by PSDB. With the passing of time, PT established itself in that position and the PSDB, although remaining in the center-right, ended up being a placeless party, whose discourse and political action are out of tune. As shown in Graph 1, the answers by PSDB s legislators to Power s survey classify it as a center-right