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Brazilian Party Underdevelopment in Comparative Perspective

Until the 1980s, most analyses emphasized the similarities of political parties throughout Latin America. More recent scholarship has argued that this perspective is misleading. ' Parties have been central political actors in some countries (Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela) and less important in many others. Even where parties have been less important, their nature can differ in significant regards, as can the reasons for the relative subordination of parties. This point is important, because many of my arguments about Brazilian party development resemble, on first appearance, conventional and often mistaken wisdom about the nature of parties in Latin America. Many analysts portray parties throughout all of Latin America as weak, but this characterization is somewhat misleading in its own right and draws attention away from the singular nature of party fragility in Brazil. The first half of this article argues that the underdevelopment of political parties in Brazil is exceptional in Latin America and on a world scale. Endowed with the eighth largest capitalist economy in the world, Brazil still lacks enduring parties that effectively represent civil society.