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running for president with the support of a centre-right coalition formed by his own party, the PSDB 3 , and the main rightist party of the country, the PFL Since then, the party system has gained in clarity, organised around four strong parties -PSDB, PFL, PMDB and PT -and three or four medium-sized ones -PP, PDT, PTB and PL.Furthermore, a string of analyses started showing that governing processes are not in the least chaotic, since consistent coalitions, ideologically connected, render some predictability to the political system's operation. The administrations and party leaders were quite successful in handling the legislative agenda through National Congress channels (Figueiredo and Limongi 1999). These findings give rise to an interesting debate about the conditions for governance in the so-called coalition-based presidential system. 4 As the new century starts, the great test of every democracy takes place -power changes hands with the rise to the presidency of Cardoso's main opponent during the previous eight years. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, originally a factory worker and union leader, the dominant figure of the PT, the largest leftist party, is elected in 2002, governs, and is re-elected in 2006. A concomitant phenomenon is the continuing dominance in the legislative arena of the same four parties, which reveals a surprising stability of the party system in view of pessimistic diagnoses prevailing in the mid-1990s. If this picture is looked at in broader historical perspective, it would not be impertinent to speak of stabilisation and consolidation of democracy. What, then, is the mistake of the pessimistic analyses? I argue that analytical gains would be greater should the lessons of certain "old" theories about democracy be taken into account. Such theories have in common a basic factor -time -, and its absence in traditional views is clearly damaging to their explanatory power. The underestimation of political actors' capacity to adapt to institutional rules, as well as their potential for strategic coordination within a set of given institutions, is a recipe for error and bad predictions. We shall see that the three theories informing my analysis presuppose that political phenomena unfold over time. In short, flawed assessments lie in wait for those who disregard time-effects in Brazilian politics.The paper is organised as follows. In the next section, I present two theses that I deem mistaken about Brazilian politics in the last fifteen years. I use the theory of the median voter to counter the two views, calling attention principally to the centripetal nature of party competition, particularly for majority elections such as the presidential election. In the third section, I analyse the evolution and format of the party system by bringing up key lessons of the theory of electoral systems' political consequences. As political elites accommodate their strategies to party competition, having in mind the distribution of electoral preferences and the electoral rules, further stability and clarity ar...

An analysis of the endogenous and exogenous political and economic factors that conditioned the Partido dos Trabalhadores’s (PT) social-developmentalist project in 2003–2016 in the light of financialization and the “confidence game” conditioned by the volatility of external liquidity and commodities prices concludes that the first Lula administration faced the problem of a crisis of confidence and adopted orthodox policies but was able, with the improvement of international conditions, to launch policies of a more interventionist and distributive trend. Dilma Rousseff, facing a downright unfavorable international context, explicitly broke with the confidence game by applying the policy set of the new macroeconomic matrix. In her second term she radically reversed the policy orientation, moving toward a strong fiscal adjustment and monetary orthodoxy, and this eventually undermined her few sources of political support. The economic crisis from the second half of 2014 on undoubtedly contributed to the political crisis, which in turn made infeasible any attempt to implement policies to reverse the situation of economic crisis. Dilma’s impeachment finally interrupted the PT’s developmentalist project, allowing the emergence of new political actors. Uma análise dos fatores endógenos e exógenos, políticos e econômicos que condicionaram o projeto social-desenvolvimentista do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) em 2003–2016 à luz da financeirização e do “confidence game” condicionado pela volatilidade dos ciclos externos de liquidez e preços de commodities conclui que o primeiro governo Lula enfrentou o problema de crise de confiança e adotou políticas ortodoxas, mas pôde, com a melhoria nas condições internacionais, adotar políticas de perfil mais intervencionista e redistributivista. Já Dilma Rousseff, embora enfrentando contexto internacional francamente desfavorável, rompe explicitamente com o “confidence game” ao assumir o conjunto de políticas da Nova Matriz Macroeconômica. Na transição do primeiro para o segundo mandato, Dilma inverteu radicalmente a orientação das políticas, partindo para um forte ajuste fiscal e a ortodoxia monetária, o que acabou minando os poucos focos de sustentação política com os quais contava na sociedade. A crise econômica a partir do segundo semestre de 2014 sem dúvida contribuiu para dar origem à crise política, e esta por sua vez inviabilizou qualquer tentativa de implementação de políticas para reverter o quadro de crise econômica. O impeachment de Dilma, por fim, interrompe o projeto desenvolvimentista do PT, permitindo a emergência de novos atores políticos.

This research note examines the results of the 2014 elections focusing on the National Congress. Its main objective is to ponder over common claims and predictions regarding the future of Brazilian politics. Beyond agreements and alliances involved in the electoral dispute, President Dilma Rousseff once again shall face the political challenges and dilemmas of Brazilian presidentialism, namely, how to create and manage government coalitions capable of implementing a coherent political program with a fragmented and heterogeneous Congress. The critical examination of the current hypotheses on the latest elections, especially concerning parliamentary fragmentation and a shift towards the right-wing, will serve as a compass attempting to formulate possible answers to such a fundamental problem in Brazilian politics.Keywords: Elections; national congress; parties; Rousseff administration; coalition.he following text is a research paper and as such, it does not intend to formulate a closed theoretical argument, thereby developing testable hypotheses; moreover, it does not claim to produce an empirical analysis