Blog 7: Brazil

Blog 7: Brazil

According to Duverger’s law, countries that have proportional representation rules in their electoral system will produce a greater number of parties whereas plurality rules will effectively only produce two. In the country of Brazil this theory appears to hold true. It is a proportional representation system with multiple registered parties. It is only a matter of determining how many effective parties there really are in order to determine if more than two parties have a significant influence. We will study the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elections in order to determine this.

There were 23 registered parties in Brazil’s last election. Due to the high number of parties participating in the electoral system, there is no real dominant party. For this reason, parties often have to form coalition governments in order to reach accordance. A coalition government is basically several political parties cooperating in a unified administration (Wikipedia, 2012). In the 2010 election for example, the Workers Party, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, among several other parties formed a coalition government classified as “Lulista” and together they controlled 60% of the seats in the Deputies Chamber and 61% of the seats in the Senate (Wikipedia, 2012). Moreover, there were seven parties that were left out of the coalition from which all of them together would control about 11% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and about 7% in the Senate. Some of these parties however, do not hold any seats in the Chamber or Senate and therefore have no influence.

“Brazil uses an open-list d'Hondt proportional representation system to elect federal and state deputies and city council members” (Mongabay, 2012). Also meaning that voters choose from a party preferential list. Seats then are “allotted according to the simple quotient and highest average calculations” and there is no election threshold, parties are accounted for even if they get 1% of the votes (IPU, 2012). There are 27 constituencies that correspond to the country’s 26 states and the Federal District (IPU, 2012). The number of seats that are elected in each state depend on its respective population. The Chamber of Deputies has a total number of 513 seats while the Senate has a total of 81. There was no other specific evidence for the formula used in the electoral system of Brazil in order to allocate seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

The ending result of elections in Brazil bring about two coalition governments and seven parties outside the coalition that do not really have influence at all. I can therefore conclude that Brazil is more of a two party system because there are effectively only two sides in the government, which are the “Lulistas” and its opposition (center-right). We cannot however ignore the fact that there are multiple parties participating in every election and that each party is seeking their respective interests and those of the people they are representing. Therefore, it is to still be considered a multi-party system as far as elections go but more of a two party system when it comes to government affairs. This evidence proves that Duvereger’s law holds some truth in Brazil.

Bibliography

1.      Mongabay.com "Brazil-The Electoral System." Brazil-The Electoral System. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. http://www.mongabay.com/history/brazil/brazil-the_electoral_system.html

2.      "IPU PARLINE Database: BRAZIL (Cámara Dos Deputados), Electoral System." IPU PARLINE Database: BRAZIL (Cámara Dos Deputados), Electoral System. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2043_B.htm

3.      "Elections in Brazil." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil