The Class Cleavage and the Institutionalization of Brazil's Party System

The last two presidential elections in Brazil illustrate the emergence of social class as the most powerful predictor of electoral behavior. Having developed secure social bases, both opposition and government coalitions now strive to capture a median voter belonging to the lower-middle class. This paper argues that a class cleavage has emerged in Brazilian politics, with important consequences for patterns of political competition. The current paradigm in the theoretical literature on class cleavage formation, which emphasizes the role of political agency, cannot convincingly account for Brazil’s experience. The class cleavage emerged in Brazilian politics at a time of marked convergence of government and opposition positions on the left-right axis. By focusing on the role of social policy in solving a “class information failure”, this paper provides support for the structuralist theory of cleavage formation, which is largely ignored in the recent literature. The class cleavage is thereby interpreted as the consequence of politicians’ credibility in advancing the interests of their target constituencies. The formation of the class cleavage is shown to have a potentially decisive impact for the consolidation of democracy in Brazil, by providing a system of incentives for ideological moderation and contributing to a diffusion of the bipolar model of presidential politics anchored by the Workers’s Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) to gubernatorial, mayoral, and legislative elections.