Epstein (2009) Clientelism Vs Ideology

PA RT Y P O L I T I C S
V O L 1 5 . N o . 3 pp. 335355
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CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Problems of Party Development in Brazil
Daniel J. Epstein
ABSTRACT
Although aggregate data on party competition in Brazil seem hopeful,

unsettling trends appear in state-level party systems in the years of the
consolidation of Brazilian democracy (the period this article examines
extends through the 2002 elections), such as instability and fragmentation, which exceed the extent of problems apparent at the national level.
These hamper the informational role parties can play for voters picking
from a large number of candidates. While other possible explanations
shed little light on these problems, a hypothesis about clientelistic partybuilding strategies may explain the patterns in party competition across
states. Such strategies depend on the distribution of selective benefits,
such as patronage or vote-buying, to attract candidates, elicit votes and
gain office for the party. Clientelistic party-building strategies provide no
extra-material incentive for party cohesion, and may stymie the development of a stable competitive system. Furthermore, it is through clientelism that party clans exercise hegemony over the local political system
in some states, promoting an undemocratic monopoly on power.
KEY WORDS Brazil clientelism political parties regional politics
Introduction
Parties have a key role to play in any democracy: that of providing informational short cuts. The need for parties to play this role is especially critical
in new democracies where politics is in a state of flux that may exhaust voters
capacity to process information about individual politicians. Brazil presents
an extreme case for the indispensability of parties because its Open List
Proportional Representation (OLPR) system can present voters with lists of
60600 candidates from which they must choose one.
The party system was one of the most problematic realms of consolidation
in the years after the Brazilian military regime left power. Fernando Collor,
1354-0688[DOI: 10.1177/1354068809102250]
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at MORA - Parent on November 3, 2015
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
the first popularly elected president of the current democratic period, created
the briefly successful Partido Reconstruo Nacional (PRN) as a vehicle for
his election campaign in 1989 (Hagopian, 1996: xvixx). However, he was
impeached in 1992 and the party collapsed almost immediately. In the late
1980s, the largest party to emerge from the years of military regime, the
Partido do Movimento Democrtico Brasileiro (PMDB), split in two, with
many defectors following academic (and later president) Fernando Henrique
Cardoso to form a splinter party, the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira
(PSDB). Cardoso and the PSDB went on to win the presidency in 1994, several
governorships, including the two largest states, So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro,
and nearly a fifth of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Nevertheless, the
original PMDB was undaunted, and met with success in both gubernatorial
and legislative races, maintaining one of the largest congressional delegations.
Furthermore, in the next two presidential elections the PMDB supported the
PSDBs candidate, begging the question of how truly separate the parties were.
Over a longer period, one of the other major parties to emerge from the
military regime has had five different names: Aliana Renovadora Nacional
(ARENA), then Partido Democrtico Social (PDS), Partido Progressista
Reformador (PPR), Partido Progressista Brasileiro (PPB) and, finally, Partido
Progressista (PP) after 2003. It merged with two other parties along the way,
and its current name is in fact the same as an old merger partner (PP website,
2008; note that for the graphs in this article this party is labelled by its
acronym at the time of the 2002 elections, PPB). Another source of confusion
is the similarity of some party names. The Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT),
the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), the Partido Democrtico Trabalhista
(PDT) and several other minor parties with similar names may muddle a
ballot for many voters. Moreover, the names of these parties can sometimes
be misleading, in ideological terms; while the PT has a history of anchoring
the left (Mainwaring, 1999: 19), the PTB adheres to the centreright in what
little ideology it manifests. Many scholars have lamented the tumult in the
Brazilian party system since the end of the military regime (Mainwaring,
1999; Power, 2000: 2830). Explanations of such problems favour the institutional approach (Ames, 1995, 2001; Mainwaring, 1991; Mainwaring and
Prez-Lian, 1997; Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997), especially faulting the
OLPR system used to elect both state and national legislatures. Another
problem has been the parties fluid membership. Mainwaring and PrezLian (1997) have shown the atrocious record of party unity in the initial
post-transition years. Furthermore, Mainwaring (1999) notes a number of
disturbing trends in party development, such as high vote-volatility in
sequential elections, which he claims indicates a weakly institutionalized party
system. Power (2000: 923) brings to light severe identifiability problems
among parties of the direita envergonhada or embarrassed right: ideologically conservative parties take names that sound leftist, declare themselves centrist and in some cases their candidates even avoid divulging their
party label during campaigns.
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EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY
However, a look at Figures 1 and 2 does not betray a sense of these

problems. Throughout the late 1990s and into the beginning of the new
century, four or five parties, which reflect the whole political spectrum,
dominate the Brazilian legislature. Though parties like the PMDB and PP
had to give way to rising parties like the PT and PFL over the years, the
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1982
1986
1990
1994
1998
2002
PT
PSDB
PMDB
PFL
PPB
PDT
PTB
PL
PSB
PCB/PPS
PSD
PC do B
PST
PSC
PSL
PV
PMN
PRONA
PRP
PSDC
PRN/PTC
PDC
PTR/PP
PRS
Figure 1. Composition of Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

Source: Instituto Universitrio de Pesquisas de Rio de Janeiro website
(http://www.iuperj.br/deb/ing/Cap2/Cap2_tab20.htm)
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
PT
PSDB
PMDB
1986
PFL
PPB
PDT
1990
PTB
PL
1994
PSB
PCB/PPS
PSD
1998
PST
PMN
PRN/PTC
2002
PDC
PTR/PP
Figure 2. Composition of Brazilian Senate (seats won each election), 19862002

337
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
system does not show signs of extreme fragmentation, and the major parties
show ample endurance, with no signs of a collapse of the party system.
The Importance of Healthy Parties

The problems of unstable or weakly institutionalized political parties can
have a serious impact on both governability and representation. Difficulty in
building legislative coalitions, building public support for new policies and
producing an electoral mandate to oppose vested interests are all supremely
difficult without strong, competitive parties. Representation, however, is as
fundamental to democracy as governability (if not more so), and here is
where parties have an absolutely indispensable role to play.
Downs (1957: 969) explains that rational voters need ideologies to summarize parties policy platforms in order to vote according to their interests,
because they have neither the time nor the resources to find and sufficiently
study all parties platforms to make an informed decision. Implicit in this
logic, and more fundamental to democracy, is that voters need party labels
to summarize the policy stances of individual candidates. Without parties to
provide informational short cuts, most voters (especially those with limited
wealth and education) will hardly be able to vote their preferences, which
may turn voting into a random act, from a representational perspective.
Three major factors contribute to a partys ability to provide necessary
information:
Continuity whether the party is present as a major player in election
after election.
Distinguishability whether the party is distinguishable as a major one,
or just another among a profusion of tiny, futile parties.
Identifiability whether the statements and activities of politicians clarify
or obscure their membership in the party and what the party stands for.
Without a continued presence in a given political system or even if a party
flips back and forth from being a serious competitor to presenting nobodies
as candidates the information that voters acquire about a party is useless
by the next election. This frustrates the rational voters attempts to assess
which parties ideologies are worth expending scarce informational resources
to explore. Continuity results from factors inside a party (how seriously it
tries to compete in a given election) and outside (how successful other
parties are at beating it out). Distinguishability depends on similar factors,
because even when a party makes a serious effort to compete, if enough
other parties do the same, then they may each be left with a tiny slice of the
vote that renders legislating the partys platform futile. Causal factors for
identifiability, however, are internal to political parties (e.g. the example of
the embarrassed right).
338
These three factors are critical, especially in a multiparty system as in

Brazil, in order to guarantee an essential minimum of democratic representation: the capacity to throw the rascals out. Unless parties are clearly
enough understood for people to know who to vote for if they want the
incumbents out, the rascals may survive in office even in the face of a
majority willing that they leave. If a system is unstable, then a minority of
voters might opt for opposition parties that did well in the last election,
while others might choose promising new opposition parties, and the rascals
could remain in power. Similarly, if there are so many parties that an oppositionist voter cannot tell who the serious competitors are, incumbents
might be able to salvage enough votes to maintain their seats because antiincumbents votes are split among too many opposition parties.
The State Level

Although the national data presented above do not suggest that Brazils
parties are hampered in playing their critical informational role, it is important to consider political development at the sub-national level as well,
especially in such a large and heterogeneous country. Brazil is a federal
system made up of 26 states and one federal (capital) district. Congressional
deputies, senators and governors are elected in state-wide districts which
constitute the main arenas of party competition and play central parts in
the drama of national politics (Ames, 2001: 98). Moreover, the state-level
organizations of Brazils political parties are fairly autonomous and their
decisions are the most important, and often national party leaders cannot
control them (de Moraes, 1997: 35). Thus, for political parties, state-level
phenomena are more likely to have a causal effect on national politics than
the other way round.
Problems stemming from continuity and distinguishability can easily be
seen at the state level in electoral results. The state of Rondnia (Figure 3)
presents a good example of the pattern of a competitive, but unstable, party
system. In any given election, only a couple of parties win more than a fifth
of the seats, which ought to help voters assess the parties, except that by
the next election it is a different set of parties. The PTB disappeared entirely
after a big victory in 1990 and then returned in 1998 as only a minor party.
The PFL, by contrast, seems to have had an aberration in 1990 (the beginning of stability for most other parties), disappearing entirely. The PDT had
a great showing in 1994, but has won no seats since then. And one of the
two most successful parties in 2002, the PT, made its first appearance in
the states delegation. Other states that show patterns resembling that of
Rondnia are Roraima, Paran and, to a lesser degree, Amazonas.
The problem of distinguishability is most salient in a fragmented system.
If many parties win small proportions of the seats, then parties can play
only a limited informational role, because it is difficult to distinguish major
339
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1982
PT
1986
PFL
PMDB
PSDB
1990
PPB
PL
1994
PTB
PDT
PCB/PPS
1998
PTR/PTR/PP
2002
Figure 3. Party shares Rondnia delegation to Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

parties1 from the rest. A profusion of parties that win a tiny percentage of
the vote make it hard for voters to learn about them all. Rio de Janeiro
(Figure 4) provides the most striking example of this fragmented competition. Major parties over the years have been the PDT (which is based in the
state) in the early 1990s, the PSDB and PFL in the late 1990s, the PMDB
at various points, and in 2002 the PT and PSB, but in almost every case the
parties emerging strong from the previous election drop to minor-party status
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
PT
PFL
PMDB
1982
PSDB
PPB
PL
1986
PTB
PSB
1990
PDT
PCdoB
1994
PV
PSD
PSC
1998
PSDC
PDC
2002
PRN
PTR/PP
Figure 4. Party shares Rio de Janeiro delegation to Chamber of Deputies,

19822002
340
in the next, making it difficult for voters to keep track of all the potential
players. Many Brazilian states are afflicted by a very fragmented party system,
including the large states of Minas Gerais and (to a lesser degree) So Paulo,
as well as a number of small states, such as Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do
Sul, Espirito Santo, Alagoas and Sergipe.
Santa Catarina (Figure 5) is perhaps the best example of the few Brazilian
states in which parties stability and distinguishability promote a healthy
system of party competition. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the
PFL, PMDB and PP constituted most of the states delegation, and so voters
could easily learn which were major parties and avoid wasting their votes.
The gradual evolution of PT into a competitive party (and the waning of
PFL) also shows that the system is not so ossified or oligopolistic that it
excludes new points of view. From the perspective of democratic choice and
representation, this stable competitive pattern approaches the ideal party
system, because there are not too many parties (though still enough to
accommodate most ideological viewpoints), and it is clear how to vote
against a given party. The other states that fit this pattern are Rio Grande
do Sul, Piau, Rio Grande do Norte and, to a degree, Gois.
The fourth important pattern of competition found in Brazilian states is
a hegemonic party system. It presents a threat to the very concept of democratic choice, because ultimately the system is not one of competition, but
of domination (or co-optation). This is comparable to the PRI hegemony in
Mexico, where for several decades opposition parties were allowed to win
only a handful of seats in the Mexican congress, and never any presidential
or gubernatorial elections. The state of Bahia (Figure 6) is the best example
of this type of competition, or lack of competition, as the case may be.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1982
1986
PT
PFL
1990
PMDB
PSDB
PPB
1994
PL
PDT
1998
2002
Figure 5. Party shares Santa Catarina delegation to Chamber of Deputies,

19822002
341
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
1982
100%
PT
PFL
PMDB
1986
PSDB
PPB
PL
1990
PTB
PSB
PDT
1994
PCB/PPS
PCdoB
PV
1998
PDC
PRN
PTR/PP
2002
Figure 6. Party shares Bahia delegation to the Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

After its creation in the mid-1980s, the PFL quickly came to dominate Bahian
elections, as one of its leaders, former governor and senator Antnio Carlos
Magalhes (aka ACM), was Bahias principal political boss. A hegemonic
party system does not necessarily imply that one party always wins all the
seats, but rather that it totally dominates the other parties, as well as the
outcomes of the first-past-the-post gubernatorial and senatorial elections. If
a party consistently wins all or most of these elections, it is exercising
hegemony in the state, even though its use of allies in the proportional representation races dilutes its numerical dominance of the congressional delegations. In Bahia, the PFL won every gubernatorial and senatorial contest from
1994 until its hold was broken in 2006.2 Tocantins, Maranho and Cear
also show the signs of a hegemonic system. Signs of hegemony were also
present in Paraba and Pernambuco throughout the 1990s, although the
2002 elections marked the end of them.
Thus, the four patterns of party competition visible in Brazils states are:
(1) Fragmented: many parties win a tiny share of seats in each election,
making it difficult for rational voters to gather information usefully, as
there are too many parties and it is unclear which might be major
competitors.
(2) Unstable Competitive: in any given election, only a few parties win seats,
but the set of major competitive parties changes from election to election,
making it difficult for rational voters to gather information since the
knowledge they gather in one campaign proves useless in the next.
(3) Stable Competitive: in election after election, the same few parties win
seats, facilitating the usefulness of party labels as informational short
cuts for rational voters.
342
(4) Hegemonic: one party wins the lions share of seats in every election,
including majoritarian polls, which marginalizes competition, eliminating
true electoral choice for rational voters through unfair, if not illegal,
means.
This typology stems from informal analysis of electoral results. A more
systematic, quantitative method to disaggregate the factors of electoral
trends that contribute to these patterns, and sort the states accordingly, will
make it more useful. The two factors are concentration (or fragmentation)
and stability (or volatility) in the partisan make-up of the congressional
delegations.
Measuring Types and Quantitative Categorization

One accepted measurement of fragmentation is the effective number of parties
(Laakso and Taagepera, 1979). However, it is difficult to compare the ENP
between states that have differently sized delegations. Instead, I have devised
a perhaps more crude measure, but one that is more effective for distinguishing among types. It uses a threshold number of seats above which any
party is considered a major party and below a minor party. The threshold
number varies by state but is around a fifth of the delegation. This threshold
is based on the idea that voters could probably keep track of up to four parties
relatively easily, but no more (perhaps a moderate and extreme party on either
side of a leftright spectrum). A one-fifth threshold allows for four major
parties, if we expect minor parties to take up a small portion as well. A threshold also provides a useful alternative for thinking about the continuity that
differentiates between stable and unstable competitive systems. It is again
statistically crude: simply to count the number of parties that cross the threshold (either rising above or dropping below) from one election to the next. As
opposed to traditional measures of volatility that capture all parties, this
captures changes in the set of major parties (those competitive enough to be
distinguishable) without injecting noise from the turnover of minor ones,
or from shuffling of the order within the group of those considered as major.
I calculated my measures using results from three recent elections to
Brazils Chamber of Deputies (1994, 1998 and 2002) for the 26 states and
one federal district (Table 1). The concentration measure is the fraction
expressing the proportion of seats in the chamber won by all parties that
exceeded the states threshold. The closer it is to 1, the fewer the number
of seats held by minor parties, the more distinguishable are the parties
competing and the less fragmentation. The stability measure divides the
number of threshold crossings by the maximum observed (five in Paran in
2002) and subtracts the result from 1. Thus, the closer to 1, the more stable
the set of major parties.3 The following scatterplot (Figure 7) helps us see
how the various competition types cluster.
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PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
Table 1. Average stability and concentration of parties in Chamber of Deputies

delegations, 19942002
State
Stability
Concentration
Acre (AC)
Alagoas (AG)
Amap (AP)
Amazonas (AM)
Bahia (BA)
Cear (CE)
Distrito Federal (DF)
Espirito Santo (ES)
Rondnia (RO)
Gois (GO)
Maranho (MA)
Mato Grosso (MT)
Mato Grosso do Sul (MS)
Minas Gerais (MG)
Par (PA)
Paraba (PB)
Paran (PR)
Pernambuco (PE)
Piau (PI)
Rio de Janeiro (RJ)
Rio Grande do Norte (RN)
Rio Grande do Sul (RS)
Roraima (RR)
Santa Catarina (SC)
So Paulo (SP)
Sergipe (SE)
Tocantins (TO)
All States
0.6
0.53333
0.53333
0.53333
0.73333
0.93333
0.6
0.6
0.26667
0.66667
0.6
0.6
0.46667
0.6
0.53333
0.66667
0.13333
0.93333
0.86667
0.46667
1
0.86667
0.46667
0.86667
0.73333
0.53333
0.46667
0.62222
0.708333
0.37037
0.583333
0.666667
0.632479
0.69697
0.583333
0.566667
0.625
0.588235
0.62963
0.333333
0.5
0.496855
0.72549
0.694444
0.566667
0.52
0.833333
0.355072
0.791667
0.698925
0.625
0.75
0.538095
0.416667
0.833333
0.604811037
The five states not shaded were those which, from raw electoral results,
were too close to call, and, not surprisingly, they are at the intersection of
all the clusters. Besides these, the Fragmented states have low concentration
and medium stability; Unstable Competitive states have medium concentration and low stability; and then the cluster of Stable Competitive states,
which show the highest ratings on both measures, overlaps with Hegemonic states, whose cluster is centred at slightly lower levels of concentration
and stability. The Hegemonic cluster is problematic, as Pernambuco (PE) is
a bit far from the clusters centre, perhaps due to an apparent recent break
of the PFLs hegemonic grip (the two states where hegemony looks to have
been broken in 2002 are italicized). Tocantins (TO) is also a bit of an outlier,
but the hold of its local PFL on the governors seat and the senate seats,
unbroken since 1994, gives confidence that it is Hegemonic its location on
344
High concentration
Medium concentration
Low concentration
RN
High stability
CE
PI
SC
Medium stability
TO
PE
RS
PB
BA
GO
SP
AC
MA
DF
ES
PA
AM
AP
RR
Low stability
MG
MT
SE
MS
AG
RJ
RO
PR
Competition type
Fragmented
Stable Competitive Unstable competitive
Hegemonic
Figure 7. Relative concentration and stability
the scatterplot may indicate that in congressional elections the PFL switches
allies quite frequently.
Potential Explanations
Much of the recent literature focusing on party problems in Brazil explains
this by institutional rules such as the OLPR electoral formula, the electoral
calendar, the run-off presidential system and other idiosyncrasies, such as
the recently retired candidato nato rule that guaranteed any sitting deputy
a place on the party list (Ames, 1995, 2001; Mainwaring, 1991, 1999;
Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997). However, while these can explain general
tumult at the candidate level, and especially problems of party unity, they
do not provide as much purchase on problems of continuity or identifiability. Moreover, they cannot explain variation in party behaviour across states,
or variation across parties at the national or state level.
Another potential explanation could be differences in economic development. For example, poor voters in less-developed states may have no hope
that politics will improve their lot, and thus put little of their scarce time
and resources into researching their choices at the polls, so that if they do
vote at all it is nearly a random choice. This could result in high instability
and low concentration. By the same assumptions, higher-income voters in
wealthy states may be much more engaged in politics, leading to more
stable, patterned voting and a Stable Competitive system. However, data on
per capita income (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatstica, 2001) of
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PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
states do not seem to align with any of the four competition types, with the
exception of Hegemonic states, which were all below R$4000 per capita
annual income in 2001 (aggregate for Brazil was about R$7000).4 Multinomial logistic regressions do show a statistically significant negative relationship between income and hegemonic character of the system,5 but none with
any other category. There are also six non-hegemonic states that fell within
the same income range as the Hegemonic states, which suggests that it is
not simply poverty that drives hegemony. Moreover, the fact that the wealthiest of all, the Distrito Federal (with a per capita income nearly double that
of any other state), fell in the very middle of both the concentration and
stability spectra leads us to believe that income does not drive trends in
party competition.
Another possible explanation would draw on the work of Lipset and
Rokkan (1967) on social cleavages and party formation. However, data
(IBGE, 2000 Census) on the most obvious social cleavage in Brazil race
give small purchase on the divergence of party system competition types.
Multinomial logistic regressions show that the only relationships that stand
out are both related to Stable Competitive systems: a positive one with the
proportion of white population6 and a negative relationship with the proportion of population reported as neither white nor black (parda brown,
amarela yellow or indigena).7 Perhaps this would suggest that the more
middle skin tones in a state, the less likely that whites and blacks at either
end of the pigmentary spectrum will coalesce into durable, competitive
parties. However, the fact that there is no relationship between Stable
Competitive systems and proportion of black population casts doubt on
this. Another disconfirmation of race-based party development is that of the
Stable Competitive states; two have white populations near 90 percent (RS
and SC) with tiny black populations. While race could be involved here, it is
certainly not in the form of partisan cleavage. Analysis of another important
cleavage, urbanrural, yields no relationships at all, either with proportions
rural or urban, or with how closely the divide approaches parity.
If wealth or cleavage variations do not explain variation in party system
competition types, perhaps parties themselves do. In a multiparty federal
system like Brazils, where many parties do not aggregate across states
(Chhibber and Kollman, 1998), electoral arenas in different states will be
more populated with some parties than with others over time. Perhaps some
parties are simply more stable, while others experience peaks and valleys
over time because of opportunism or lack of discipline or organization. In
order to test this, it is important to look for the presence of parties over
time in a given party system, and not just their presence in the most recent
election (which, in Unstable Competitive states, is unrepresentative by definition). However, since the competition type can change over time, and we
are most interested in the prevailing type as measured by the data presented
earlier from the three elections of 19942002, it is useful to weight the more
recent elections more heavily, while still allowing for older elections to have
346
had some effect on producing the prevailing competition type. Thus, I have
devised a measure that averages each partys share of seats in a given state
over the past five elections discounting by 20 percent per cycle the weight of
seats won in earlier elections.8 Again using multinomial logistic regressions
to test the effect of the presence of each of the major parties on competition
type, very little can be found. The only statistically significant relationships
are that the PT tends to be absent from Hegemonic systems, and that the
PTB tends to be present in Unstable Competitive states.9 The former is unsurprising, given that all of the Hegemonic states are in the Northeast region
of Brazil, where the PT has historically been the weakest. However, we might
then expect an opposite relationship between the PFL and Hegemonic
systems, as it tends to be quite strong in the Northeast, and the hegemonic
party in several of the Hegemonic systems. However, only at a substantially
lower level of statistical significance can a positive relationship between the
PFL and Hegemonic systems be found,10 and adding any control variables
makes for an even weaker relationship.
A New Hypothesis: Linkage Mechanisms as an

Explanation
Another possible explanation for the variation in competition types lies in the
strategies that parties use to connect to voters and win elections. Different
types of linkage mechanisms (Kitschelt, 2000) that connect parties and
those who vote for them have implications not just for the votes cast on
election day, but also for candidates, who self-select into parties that, in their
estimation, offer the best linkage mechanism. Best means most effective
for winning votes, but will vary depending on the candidates conception
of himself as a candidate, the type of voters he thinks he will appeal to, and
the nature of the district in which he is running. Moreover, the different
types of linkage mechanism imply different kinds of voters and candidates
for parties that employ different mechanisms, as well as different behaviour
over time. In classic Downsian party theory, only one linkage mechanism is
contemplated: ideology. However, a more nuanced view of parties shows
how Kitschelts idea of tripartite typology may actually be more realistic,
and may well help to explain Brazils variation in competition type.
Schlesinger (1984: 380) points out that a key characteristic of parties is
that they operate on market-based principles: they must provide a product
that attracts enough customers to support their continued existence. They
offer policies and candidates, collective goods from which all the electorate
derives benefits if they are elected, no matter who voted for them (Schlesinger,
1984: 381). Voters then choose the party product they like best, and the electoral market rewards with office parties that have made a desirable product
and punishes the others, simultaneously determining what government policy
shall be. Downss (1957) concept of ideology as an informational short cut
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PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
was classically the only product parties would offer to voters, who would
then decide which ideological flavour they preferred.
However, Kitschelt (2000: 849) suggests, in effect, that parties may offer
substitute products to voters: personalistic linkages or clientelistic linkages.
Personalistic linkages involve the exposition (usually through the media)
of appealing personal characteristics of a partys leaders, and clientelistic
linkages employ an organization designed to distribute selective benefits to
individual voters or groups of voters who support the party. Linkage mechanism is determined by the kind of organizational infrastructure the party
decides to invest in. If it develops both an organization capable of reaching
voters in person to get out the vote, and also a means to aggregate the
interests of party members into a programme (or ideology) used to convince
voters, it can employ a programmatic linkage. If it invests in neither organization nor interest aggregation, then it has little but the leaders personal
appeal to draw voters: a personalistic linkage. If the party invests only in
organization, but does not aggregate interests of its supporters in order to
offer them a programme, then it must give clientelistic benefits in exchange
for support. If voters are willing to purchase these substitute products, then
a party need not be concerned with behaviours that reduce its usefulness as
an informational tool, and, in fact, maintaining that usefulness might even
impede the flexibility necessary to maximize access to clientelistic resources.
Such substitute products, especially Brazils ubiquitous clientelism, disrupt
the functioning of parties according to the classic theories.
Clientelism directly undermines the critical role that parties must play in
democracies by removing policy as a reason to vote for one party over
another. In fact, legislators who have employed clientelistic linkage mechanisms to get elected are actually insulated from the policy interests of their
constituents because they have substituted non-policy, selective benefits for
the collective, policy-based benefits that traditional Downsian parties use to
market themselves. Moreover, the party loyalty of both politicians and voters
who have chosen a party based on clientelistic linkages can be problematic
for parties as well. For example, if the supply of clientelistic benefits a party
is able to provide drops, then it is likely that both its voters and candidates
will switch to a party with a greater capacity to supply them. This could occur
because of a change in government at the state or federal level, an economic
downturn, or even just a shuffling of alliances among wealthy elites. Candidates from more programmatic parties, however, presumably joined the given
party because they agree with its ideology, and believe that there is a sector
of the electorate that also agrees, from whom they can elicit votes. And, if
their choice of party was predicated on the value of information that association with the party can convey to voters, then switching parties or changing
the partys name are events that they would prefer to avoid, because of the
damage they would do to their capacity to convey information. Even if the
party did poorly in a given election, such candidates would be more likely
to stick with it than those of clientelistic parties, making it less liable to total
348
collapse. Voters for such parties, also, are less likely to switch or abandon
the party if they picked the party initially based on its ideology. They have
invested scarce resources in collecting information about it, and are presumably not interested in the varying levels of selective benefits that different
clientelistic parties may be offering. And while they might prefer another
party of the same ideology, there may not be many out there to select from,
and, after all, even that switch would require the gathering of additional
information. Clientelistic parties, however, have no hold over their candidates or voters besides the very short-term benefits they provide, so if these
change, their partisans have no reason to stick with them.
Thus, the more the parties in a given state employ clientelistic linkage
mechanisms, the more instability is likely. In any given election, only a few
parties may be able to collect the resources to offer selective benefits broadly
enough to be elected. But any number of events could shift the balance of
such resources, making it unlikely that it would be the same set of parties
from one election to the next: an Unstable Competitive system. By comparison, considering a state with only programmatic parties parties that are
truly oriented towards policy programmes will likely coalesce around a
few ideological viewpoints (perhaps an extreme and a moderate point on
either side of a leftright spectrum). Furthermore, party politicians and
voters are likely to stick with their party from one election to the next as
the best way to see their preferred ideology carried into policy (and also
because they share opinions with their co-partisans, potentially increasing
internal bonds of the party through legislative cooperation). This is likely
to produce a Stable Competitive system. It is also possible that both types
of parties are capable of existing in the same system. If some parties can
hand out enough selective benefits to win seats, and other parties can appeal
to points on an ideological spectrum to win seats, this may add up to many
parties capable of winning a few seats each: a Fragmented system. Finally,
consider if a single party were able to monopolize the resources necessary
for providing selective benefits, and were thus able to provide such extensive selective benefits that most voters chose this party instead of those that
could only offer the collective benefits of programmatic linkage mechanisms.
If the party were able to control state resources over time because of electoral
dominance, this would create a Hegemonic system. Importantly, this is
much more likely in states where private sources of clientelistic benefits are
not extensive enough to compete with state resources, allowing electoral
dominance to translate directly into the dominance of clientelistic resources.
Moreover, the other opposition parties in such a system would be left with
only programmatic linkages with which to attract votes. Thus, like a Fragmented system, a Hegemonic system is also theorized to contain a few programmatic parties, though they will likely only show up as minor parties.
349
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
Measuring Clientelism Testing the Explanation

Though there is no index of clientelism that can tell us how clientelistic or
programmatic parties are, we can still make useful observations and even
draw some tentative conclusions from available data. While we found little
relationship between any national party and competition type, the independence of state-level party organizations gives us reason to expect variation
across states in the type of linkage mechanism employed by a party. One
possible proxy for clientelism is suggested by the work of Desposato (2001),
who shows that societal variables condition vote-buying and other clientelistic behaviour (such as corruption); specifically, that greater poverty, inequality and generally lower social indicators coincide with a far higher
incidence of clientelistic behaviour. The survey work of Transparncia Brasil
on the 2000 and 2002 elections corroborates this, showing that the poorer
Northeast, North and CentreWest regions report higher levels of vote-buying
than the South and Southeast (Transparncia Brasil, 2003). Unfortunately, the
data are aggregated to the level of region, which precludes using it to analyse
state-level competition types. Nevertheless, descriptive statistics provide some
confidence for clientelism as a cause: all the Hegemonic systems occurred in
the Northeast or North and CentreWest, which reported the highest levels
of corruption and vote-buying, while no Hegemonic or Unstable Competitive
systems are located in the Southeast, which had the lowest scores. However,
since three of the five Stable Competitive systems (RN, PI and GO) are found
in the Northeast, North or CentreWest, where vote-buying is most prevalent, while only two of the seven states in the South and Southeast evince a
Stable Competitive type, these regionally aggregated data give only weak
support to the hypothesis that clientelism explains the variation.
Without an index of clientelism or state-level data on vote-buying that
could be used as a dependable proxy for clientelistic linkages, we must seek
other data at the state level that could be used in that capacity, based on our
conception of clientelism and the Brazilian electoral system. One important
aspect of the system is the Open List. Voters in congressional elections vote
for one candidate out of dozens or hundreds on a list, each of whom has a
party label. However, because the number of seats allotted to each party
depends on the pooled number of votes on that partys list, parties are incentivized to fill out their lists with candidates, since even those not likely to
win enough votes to be elected may still bring in a few votes that will benefit
the overall list. At the same time, a list including a few extremely popular
candidates will often receive enough votes to have seats allocated even for
its less popular members. Thus, if some parties depend on a few clientelistic
candidates to sweep a large slate into office, the top vote-getters may receive
many more votes than the least vote-getters, creating a huge variance in the
number of votes received. By contrast, a programmatic party whose candidates all equally represent the same ideology should, theoretically, attract
an even number of votes across the list: voters should be indifferent to which
350
of the partys candidates they vote for. Of course, factors such as incumbency, popularity or ability to convey the partys message may still skew a
programmatic partys vote totals across the list, but it should theoretically
exhibit a lower variance than that of clientelistic parties. Only perhaps in a
hegemonic party would clientelistic benefits be handed out more evenly, if
party leaders wished to spread them out, and popular candidates could not
defect to another clientelistic partys list.
I collected data on the variances within candidate lists for parties in 19
of Brazils 27 federal units for the 1998 and 2002 congressional elections,
an unfortunately low N, especially for regression analysis. In order to make
data comparable across parties and states, I calculated the coefficient of
variance for each party list, and then in order to amalgamate the values to
the state level for analysis I weighted them by the fraction of seats each party
won. This provides an average measure of how skewed or even candidate
vote totals are within each state.
Figure 8 shows the 16 states from the four system types (I collected data
from three too-close-to-call states for the regression analysis, but they are
left out of the chart). From the left, we have four Hegemonic states (BA,
CE, MA and PE), three Unstable Competitive states (PR, RO and RR), five
Fragmented states (RJ, SE, SP, MG and MT) and four Stable Competitive
states (RN, RS, SC and PI). The Stable Competitive systems should have the
lowest values, as they are expected to have the fewest clientelistic parties,
while the Unstable Competitive systems should have the highest values. Hegemonic systems and Fragmented systems should be somewhere in between. A
multinomial logistic regression of the two years combined yielded only an
ordinal ranking, and that at a low level of confidence: Hegemonic systems
evince the lowest coefficients of variance, then Stable Competitive Systems,
then Unstable Competitive and the highest are seen in Fragmented systems.
Although the confidence level of these rankings is weak, and the Fragmented
systems are certainly out of order, the relative ranks of Stable and Unstable
1.8
Coefficient of variance
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
1998
2002
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
BA
CE
MA
PE
PR
RO
RR
RJ
SE
SP
MG
MT
RN
RS
SC
PI
Figure 8. Weighted average coefficients of variance for parties in 16 Brazilian states

Note: Coefficients of variance give a standardized measure of how much intra-party vote totals
diverge from the mean for the party
351
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
Competitive systems do at least point in the right direction. Intra-party vote

totals are more skewed in Unstable Competitive systems than in Stable
Competitive systems.
The main mechanism by which clientelism may cause instability is through
party-switching (see above). This has been studied extensively among
deputies elected to the Brazilian Congress (Figueireido and Limongi, 2000;
Mainwaring and Prez-Lian, 1997), but only among successful candidates.
Concrete data on all candidates are difficult to come by, and the only alternative is manual coding by checking lists of candidate names. I coded repeat
candidates for 12 states (3 of each type from the 19 above) for the 1998 and
2002 elections, calculating the ratio of party-changing to party-loyal candidates, which should give a good comparative index (Figure 9) of whether
more candidates abandon their parties in some states than in others, an
implication of the theory that clientelistic parties should have a harder time
holding on to their partisans than programmatic parties have.
Most states had fewer candidates switching parties than staying in the same
party.11 In general, the graph comports with the expectations of the theory:
the Stable Competitive states suffered the least party-switching, and Unstable
Competitive states the most. Parties in Hegemonic states, as we might expect,
were also pretty effective at maintaining their candidates (as candidates motivated by the clientelism of Hegemonic parties would have no other party to
go to), though not as effective as those in Stable Competitive states. Parties
in the Fragmented states, on average, fared slightly worse than those in
Hegemonic states, but better than those in Unstable Competitive states,
which we might expect if roughly equal proportions of clientelistic and programmatic parties populate Fragmented states party systems. Multinomial
logistic regressions confirmed this ordering, though again at mediocre levels
of confidence (most not better than 60 percent, and in fact much less for
the distinction between Hegemonic and Fragmented systems), most likely
because of the very low N (12) and the overwhelming frequency of partychanging in Roraima.
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
BA
CE
MA
PR
RO
RR
RJ
SE
SP
RN
RS
SC
Figure 9. Ratios of party-changing candidates to party-loyal candidiates, 19982002

Note: A higher value indicates more party-switching and thus perhaps more clientelistic parties
352
The data presented here suggest that the choice by state-level party organizations of clientelistic linkage mechanisms may indeed be the key to explaining the variation in patterns of competition in state-level party systems in
Brazil. Though statistical analysis does not produce results at high enough
levels of confidence to be certain, it seems to favour this hypothesis over others
of economic development level, racial or urbanrural cleavages, or national
party trends. This notwithstanding, the last of these alternative explanations
contains a germ of the clientelism hypothesis, if we suspect that while most
state-level party organizations choose whether they will pursue clientelistic
or programmatic strategies, some parties, e.g. the PTB and PT, may be so
imbued with clientelistic or programmatic linkage mechanisms that they do
use the same strategy everywhere. Thus, linkage mechanisms may explain the
findings of PTB presence in Unstable Competitive systems and PT absence in
Hegemonic systems. Meanwhile, we could still expect other parties to exercise
more local autonomy, perhaps even mimicking the linkage mechanisms of
other parties in their state, instead of adhering to a national strategy.
Conclusions
This piece has argued that while Brazils national party system looks to be
settling down nicely, divergent trends in state-level party systems, where
most voters actually interact with parties, are potentially quite damaging to
parties capacity to play their key informational role in democracy. After
considering some potential explanations, the hypothesis was advanced that
state-level party organizations choice of clientelistic versus programmatic
linkages could be the best explanation. Proxy data on clientelism were presented, as well as some analysis thereof, which gives some confirmation to
the hypothesis, although at rather low confidence levels. These are probably
primarily the result of a maximum N of 27 (the number of Brazils federal
units), and in several cases even fewer because of data constraints. Improvement could be made by collecting full datasets for all states, and also by using
different kinds of data that might serve as better proxies for clientelism,
such as surveys of corruption and its association with specific parties in
specific states, or state-level measures of pork legislation or public employment. Another improvement would be better specified measures of the
competition type, as some of the states could not be classified at all, perhaps
including electoral results from state-legislative elections as well, and finding
a formula by which to amalgamate these with the congressional, senatorial
and gubernatorial electoral results.
Another important set of improvements would stem from field research
allowing for a more qualitative component to this analysis, which might
clarify some of the vaguer statistical patterns and perhaps bring to light
unseen trends (such as how parties cooperate over time, which might change
our assessments of fragmentation and hegemony, if stable coalitions play
353
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 5 ( 3 )
the informational role of parties in some states). It might also suggest some
other potential explanations for the divergence of state party systems.
Nevertheless, Mainwarings quote from the governor of Paraba state may
well be the most apt in assessing the growing pains of Brazilian democracy:
The biggest party in Brazil is the PCB, Brazilian Clientelistic Party. If we
cant get rid of this party, well never be able to solve the problems of the
country (Folha de So Paulo, 1 November 1987, in Mainwaring, 1999: 175).
Notes
1 Major parties are those that win enough seats to have a real chance to legislate,
as opposed to tiny, futile parties, which rarely win more than a couple of seats,
if any, and thus are manifestly unable to translate the preferences of their
supporters into legislation comporting with their ideologies.
2 1994 was also the last time that a PFL candidate had to go a second round to
win the governors chair.
3 A stability value of 1 means no parties rose above or fell below the threshold
from one election to the next. A value of 0.4, for example, means that rising and
falling parties totalled three (two rising and one falling, or two falling and one
rising, and so on).
4 $1 R$2.7; 1 R$3.5.
5 Z-value = 1.98, p > | z | = 0.048. All others showed p-values at 0.47 or higher.
6 Z-value = 2.09, p > | z | = 0.037.
7 Z-value = 2.16, p > | z | = 0.031.
8 2002 seat-shares count 100 percent; 1998, 80 percent; 1994, 60 percent; 1990,
40 percent; 1986, 20 percent.
9 PT with Hegemonic: Z-value = 2.01, p > | z | = 0.045. PTB with Unstable
Competitive: Z-value = 2.01, p > | z | = 0.045.
10 Z-value = 1.30, p > | z | = 0.192.
11 The exception, Roraima, actually had a ratio of 7:1, but the graph has been cut
off at 2 for the sake of comparison.
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DANIEL J. EPSTEIN received his PhD in Political Science in 2008 from the Department of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is
currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York. [email: depstei3
@mail.rochester.edu]
Paper submitted 28 August 2008; accepted for publication 27 November 2008.
355

Epstein (2009) Clientelism Vs Ideology

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PA RT Y P O L I T I C S

Copyright 2009 SAGE Publications

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CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Although aggregate data on party competition in Brazil seem hopeful,

KEY WORDS Brazil clientelism political parties regional politics

Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at MORA - Parent on November 3, 2015

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

However, a look at Figures 1 and 2 does not betray a sense of these

Figure 1. Composition of Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

Figure 2. Composition of Brazilian Senate (seats won each election), 19862002

The Importance of Healthy Parties

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

These three factors are critical, especially in a multiparty system as in

The State Level

Figure 3. Party shares Rondnia delegation to Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

Figure 4. Party shares Rio de Janeiro delegation to Chamber of Deputies,

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Figure 5. Party shares Santa Catarina delegation to Chamber of Deputies,

Figure 6. Party shares Bahia delegation to the Chamber of Deputies, 19822002

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Measuring Types and Quantitative Categorization

Table 1. Average stability and concentration of parties in Chamber of Deputies

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Stable Competitive Unstable competitive

Figure 7. Relative concentration and stability

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

A New Hypothesis: Linkage Mechanisms as an

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Measuring Clientelism Testing the Explanation

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Figure 8. Weighted average coefficients of variance for parties in 16 Brazilian states

Competitive systems do at least point in the right direction. Intra-party vote

Figure 9. Ratios of party-changing candidates to party-loyal candidiates, 19982002

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

EPSTEIN: CLIENTELISM VERSUS IDEOLOGY

Downs, Anthony (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.

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