Party Systems, Political Competition, and Inequality in Subnational Brazil

Abstract

Many have attributed the recent unprecedented wave of redistribution in Brazil to national economic and political factors such as the commodities boom, changes in minimum wages or premiums to skilled labor, the rise of the Partido dos Trabalhadores and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a commodities-driven economic boom. Yet much less attention has been devoted to the study of inequality at the subnational level, where trajectories of inequality across states remain incredibly varied. This article argues that Brazil’s most recent democratic transition enhanced political competition in many Brazilian states, which in turn has contributed to the amelioration of inequality. Using an original time-series cross-sectional dataset covering the highly redistributive period of 1998–2015, this article finds that Brazilian states with higher political and party competition have lower levels of inequality than those with less competitive party systems.

Partisanship, Cross-Party Coalitions, and Social Policymaking in Brazil

“…In these terms, the key finding presented here, that left-right cooperation underpinned the success of equity-enhancing reforms in the 2000s, even if ideology was diluted in the process, is reinforced. Mauro (2021) suggests that electoral competition between the Workers' Party and PSDB, two relatively institutionalized parties, significantly affected inequality reduction in Brazil, whereas partisanship would have had a diminished effect. In the three policy cases analyzed here, there is evidence that both the Workers' Party and PSDB promised the electorate that they favored increases in redistribution.…”

Party Systems, Inequality, and Redistribution

“…1 However, there exists remarkably scant attention devoted to the role of party systems or their systemic properties for explaining outcomes on inequality and redistribution, much less placing them at the center of analysis. 2 The relative neglect of studying party systems as a lens for understanding inequality becomes more puzzling considering that a large and growing literature has cataloged their myriad effects on policymaking (e.g., O'Donnell 1994;Mainwaring 1999; Mainwaring and Zoco 2007;Bawn et al 2012;Flores-Macías 2012;Karakoç 2017Karakoç , 2018Bizzarro et al 2018;Mauro 2021;Rasmussen and Knutsen 2021). In short, the organization and stability of party systems affects the type, propensity, and depth of democratic representation and policy-making.…”