Parties, Elections, and Political Communication

   CONTENTS  

Searching for left-right identity

The parliamentary and electoral dynamics of democratic Brazil yields debates, studies, and publications on the classification of the political parties along the left-right axis. Countless, fragmented, and exhibiting loose social roots, the voting tickets represent improbable coalitions that awaken doubts in voters in regard to their ideological coherence. To elucidate such classifications, political scientist Marcia Ribeiro Dias conducts the Left- and Rightwings at the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul project, which is connected to the Research Group on Parties, Elections, and Political Communication, accredited by CNPq.

This study classifies voting tickets on the grounds of their legislative action without accounting for the parliamentarians’ selfperception using a pioneering method: the parties are classified as right- or left-wing on the grounds of the law projects submitted by the parties’ parliamentary leaders. This criterion allows the positions adopted by politicians to be accurately established because they are independent from their behavior during electoral seasons and open parliamentary debates, which is affected by the conflict between the government and opposition.

This study is based on the analysis of four attributes: left-wing, right-wing, post-materialism, and target-public. Left-wing includes topics such as society, collectivism, and income redistribution. Right-wing values include the economy, freedom, and capital. Post-materialism alludes to, for example, ecologic, gender, and minorities’ problems. Finally, the target public is classified in universal, segment-specific, sectorial-capital, and sectorial-labor.

Initially focusing on legislative assemblies, the initial assembly to be approached is Rio Grande do Sul state. Although one article was already published on the 51st legislature (2003 to 2006), the full scope of the publications will encompass the period from 1998 to 2004.

Partnerships are sought to widen the scope of this project, to subject at least one state from each of the country areas to analysis, for the Lower House to establish whether the position of the parties suffers from regional influences, and to determine whether the Parliament represents a synthesis of such ideologies.