The first analyses on the new democratic party system in Brazil were marked by a pessimistic tone regarding the possibility of parties to perform essential functions in the regime. The review of the pessimist arguments, however, has not yet changed the way parties, as organizations, are understood in the Brazilian case. This paper helps to fill this gap. In order to do so, we look into actors that lie exactly in the intersection of organizational weakness and strength: party delegates. Our data come from three survey research conducted with PT delegates in 2007 and 2010, and with PSDB delegates in 2013. Briefly, our main findings are the demonstration that the two parties follow a similar pattern of organization and recruitment of political activists, mobilizing non-partisan political networks, although different networks. Moreover, we show that delegates report signs of " partisan life " even outside of periods of electoral mobilization – in the so called "entressafra eleitoral " – and that they have preferences consistent with their parties and divergent one to another.
MENEGUELLO, R., AMARAL, O. E.; BIZZARRO NETO, F. (2014). The similarities of the adversaries: The profile of the middle-level elites of the PT and the PSDB. Trabalho apresentado no XXXII Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago.
Autores
Rachel Meneguello, Oswaldo E. do Amaral e Fernando Bizzarro Neto
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