Presidentialization of Politics and Presidentialization of Party Politics: evidences from Brazil

Brazilian politics revolves around the presidency. On the electoral arena, as recent contributions to the literature have shown, the bid for the presidency organizes and structures the party system. All other offices are secondary. On the decision making arena, the 1988 Constitution grants the Chief Executive a plethora of active and reactive legislative powers that places the presidency at the center of the governmental arena. Thus, Brazil is an excellent case to test theories of the presidentialization of party politics. In this paper, we use the framework of this emerging literature to analyse the performance of the three most recent Brazilian presidents, i.e., Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Our objective is to clarify some issues raised on this burgeoning literature. First, we discuss the difference between presidentialization of politics and presidentialization of party politics. We argue that these two trends should be distinguished. Presidentialization of politics refers to the importance chief executives have on contemporary politics. In this sense, as noted by several authors, parliamentary regimes have experienced such transformation. On the other hand, presidentialization of party politics refers exclusively to the effects the popular and direct election of chief executives have on political parties. Thus, in this respect, there should remain a difference between parliamentary and presidential system. Yet, this difference should analyzed carefully. We do follow V. O. Key classical distinction between party on the electorate, on the government and as an organization. The party as organization aspect bring us to the second main point we discuss, namely, the effects of the genetic characteristics of the parties over their presidentialization. The Brazilian case is a good case to discuss this aspect since PT seems to have passed through an enormous transformation after conquering the presidency. Does “lulismo” confirm or denies the existent hypothesis? We review this debate, using views about the relation between Fernando Henrique and PSDB, on one hand, and Dilma and PT, on the other, to illuminate this issue. We argue that the emphasis on the presidentialization of PT under Lula misses the point. Throughout the paper, we use data on elections, on ministerial portfolios appointments, on roll call, on popularity polls and on legislative output to buttress our points.