Em nome da coesão: Parlamentares e comissionados nas executivas nacionais dos partidos brasileiros

Abstract

We know almost nothing about the national leaderships of the Brazilian political parties, spaces for disputes and deliberations on relevant aspects of national political life. The aim here is to begin to open the black box of these spaces, outlining a profile of the Brazilian party elites. Unpublished data on the national executive committees formed between 1980 and 2013 are used, of the seven major parties: PT, PSB, PDT, PMDB, PSDB, DEM and PP. The data on executive committees were obtained from the TSE, DHBB (FGV) and the parties themselves. Besides pointing out the differences between the parties with respect to the weight of the `party in public office' in the committees (elected representatives and political appointees), we assessed the statistical explanatory power of some variables to understanding the patterns and differences observed: ideology and party origin, its electoral strength, and participation in the federal government. Going beyond the numbers, are presented some names of leaders who stand out in party committees, stressing that the decision-making core of the machines (general secretary, finance etc.) may have a slightly different face compared to the committees as a whole. An integrated explanatory model was able to explain most of the observed variability, suggesting the party origin (internal or not to the parliament) as the main predictor. Parties with internal origin (which are the center and right-wing parties) tend to have more parliamentarized committees, while those with no internal origin (the left-wing parties) have fewer MPs; the PT national committees have more leaders with no records of public office. The results reinforce the relevance of the party genetic model, and contest one of the most entrenched assumptions in the literature: that central bodies of Brazilian parties are monolithically controlled by federal deputies and senators. It is more appropriate to talk in party elites than in one united elite. Behind the constant presence of representatives and political appointees in the national committees is the pursuit of cohesion and coordination between different elements of the party organism, both horizontally (national leadership, federal representatives and federal government) as in the vertical-federal vector (national leadership and subnational governments, representatives and party branches).