Transformation or Substitution? The Workers’ Party and the Right in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

One of the most significant recent changes in Brazilian politics is the inroads made by the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) and other leftist parties into state and municipal governments in the country's most conservative region, the Northeast. An important strand of literature argues that this is due to a transformative strategy anchored in institutional growth, which is based on opening local party directorates. In contrast, this analysis shows that the PT has made gains in the region by segmenting its strategy -that is, by focusing on two wellestablished political practices. First, the PT has leveraged executive office at higher levels of government (e.g., federal and state) in order to advance at lower levels (e.g., state and municipal). Second, it has constructed pragmatic alliances with opportunistic parties, thus revealing how the migration of opportunist politicians into allied parties allowed entrenched elites to remain in power. This suggests that the Left's subnational advances are less transformative than they seem and could potentially harm democratic consolidation.

14. Democracy and the Politicization of Inequality in Brazil, 1989–2018

“…And by blaming the post-2014 recession and unemployment rise on the PT, by supporting cuts to taxes and public spending, as well as further privatization programs, he has appeased a broad group comprised of poorer voters, and many middle-class citizens and business elites. Amidst the "crisis of representation", the fact that Bolsonaro was a political "outsider" facilitated his popularity (Alves 2018). The geography of the 2018 election supports this conclusion: only the northeastern region gave a majority to the PT's candidate, Fernando Haddad.…”

“…In this process, the presidencygiven the vast powers attributed to the post in Brazil's federal systemwas used as a springboard to make electoral gains in parliamentary, state and municipal elections for the party, particularly in the Northeast. This subsequently fed back into votes for its presidential candidates when local coalitions worked to the PT's advantage, notably in successfully implementing social programs visibly attached to the incumbent president (Alves, 2018). 15 While it is true that the PT's support in the Northeast has waned since 2006, it has done so proportionately less than in the other regionsfalling by 10 percentage points by 2018 rather than 20 points in the case of the Southeast (Figure 7).…”

Weapons of Clients: Why Do Voters Support Bad Patrons? Ethnographic Evidence from Rural Brazil

“…The long history of clientelistic politics in the Sertão of Bahia makes it an appropriate case for studying voting under competitive clientelism. The existence of clientelism in poor rural areas of Brazil like the Sertão of Bahia has been extensively documented (Leal 1997;Vilaça and Albuquerque 1978;Ames 2001;Montero 2012;Van Dyck and Montero 2015;Borges 2011;Power 2000;Alves 2018;Alves and Hunter 2017). However, the existence of high levels of political competition in these areas is less well established.…”

Linkage Switches in Local Elections: Evidence From the Workers’ Party in Brazil

“…The dominant narrative in the literature is that PT mayors resisted nonprogrammatic pressures and governed in a programmatic manner (Hochstetler, 2008; Hunter, 2007), but these assessments tend to be based on highly visible cases, such as the PT’s famous administrations in Porto Alegre (Abers, 2000). Studies that look at a wider range of cases reach mixed conclusions (Alves, 2018; Baiocchi, 2003). Here, I build on existing work by using a rigorous identification strategy and data from the complete universe of PT administrations to understand what the “PT way of governing” looked like in practice.…”