Laitn AMerica
BRAZIL’S NEW DIRECTION Wendy Hunter O n 27 October 2002, the voters of Brazil chose Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) to be their next president, giving him a wide margin of victory with 61.3 percent in a two-candidate runoff against José Serra of the Social Democratic Party (PDSB). Does the election—on his fourth try—of this lathe operator turned trade union leader and the ascendance of his leftist party signal a historic shift in Brazilian politics? What are the implications of a Lula presidency for democracy in Brazil, and what is the larger situation of that democracy now?
Should 2002 be seen as marking a new era in Brazilian politics? Is it the start of a period in which a programmatic leftist party that has cham- pioned popular participation, accountability, and redistributive change supplants the political clientelism, social elitism, and technocratic policy making for which Brazil is known? Or is it wiser to focus on the prag- matic adjustments that the PT has made, the continuing sway of conservative forces, and the multitude of constraints—political and eco- nomic, domestic and international—that will hem in efforts to make major changes?
On the one hand, the election of a candidate who is a true outsider is a dramatic break with the pattern of Brazilian politics since the postauthoritarian period began in 1985. President José Sarney (1985– 90), who inaugurated the civilian regime, had been a leading member of the official government party under the military regime that ruled from 1964 to 1985. His successor, the disgraced Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–92), had similar political origins. After serving as an opposition Wendy Hunter is associate professor of government at the University of Texas–Austin. Her current research investigates the effects of democratization, economic globalization, and international diffusion on decisions that affect social policy and human capital formation in Latin America. Journal of Democracy Volume 14, Number 2 April 2003 Latin America’s Lost Illusions Journal of Democracy 152 Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) senator during the military period, Fernando Henrique Cardoso played a leading role in brokering Brazil’s transition to democracy, forging an array of compromises with outgoing actors and solidifying his establishment credentials, albeit as a moderate social democrat affiliated initially with the PMDB and then the PDSB.
Sarney, Collor, and Cardoso all came from elite backgrounds in a society where class origins still mean a great deal. While the former two hailed from oligarchic families in the Northeast, Cardoso was the son and grandson of army generals and was a distinguished academic who had spent part of his career teaching social sciences at Stanford and Cambridge universities. Lula is the son of hardscrabble tenant farm- ers from the poverty-stricken Northeast. With his election, the exclusive club of Brazilian presidents has broadened its membership.
The PT now holds 91 of the 513 Chamber of Deputies seats and 14 of the 81 Senate seats, making it the single largest party in Congress. In 1986, it controlled 16 of 487 lower-house seats and had no Senate seats.
The story behind the increase is one of steady growth in every election, not merely in the large industrial cities of the country but also in less- developed regions such as the Northeast, an oligarchic bastion. Although it is not without internal factions, the PT is the most ideologically co- herent and disciplined party in a field dotted with parties whose politicians possess few principled commitments and have been known to switch allegiances in order to get ahead. Leaving the Left Behind? While rejecting the patronage-based politics and social elitism asso- ciated with the right, the PT has also tried to distance itself from some of the orthodoxies of the old left, including populism, corporatist labor ideology, and excessive centralization. The party’s hallmark is its em- brace of participation, accountability, and transparency, as exemplified in the participatory-budgeting programs for which PT-run municipal governments have become well known. Core PT supporters include members of the largest labor confederation, the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores; middle-class intellectuals; elements of the Catholic Church; and new social movements such as the one that defends the cause of Brazil’s landless agricultural workers.
The relative tranquility of the 2002 campaign is noteworthy as well.
In 1989, when the PT ran a strong race (it nearly beat Collor), there was severe left-right polarization and a spate of antidemocratic machina- tions as traditional contenders—the military, big business, and large landowners—warned that chaos would follow a PT victory. While the most recent election stimulated financial circles to express concern about the economic impact of a Lula presidency, the public conduct of other Wendy Hunter153 elites suggested a basic acceptance of the outcome that eventually tran- spired. That their respect for the electoral process was strong enough to override their (presumed) substantive preferences suggests a significant maturing of Brazilian democracy.
All this notwithstanding, other signs suggest that the 2002 election results should be interpreted neither as a massive rejection of the Cardoso administration’s market-oriented approach to development nor as a resounding endorsement of the PT’s program, an impression made all the stronger when one considers that all the other PT candi- dates combined drew barely half the number of votes that Lula himself received. 1 The PT’s dominant faction, known as the Articulaç~ao, has turned ever more pragmatic. While party moderates began to distance them- selves from socialist rhetoric and symbolism even before Lula’s third bid for the presidency in 1998, further edging away from radicalism took place as the 2002 race loomed. Throughout the campaign, beyond making superficial changes toward a “lighter” image, Lula strove to project moderation. He pledged to work within the political principles enshrined in the 1988 Constitution, and to be mindful of the needs of markets both at home and abroad. He expressed his commitment to fiscal responsibility, debt repayment, low inflation, and most notably the International Monetary Fund. He also promised to pursue new poli- cies to boost employment, wages, and exports while fighting poverty and inequality. He condemned the violent tactics of the Movement of Landless Rural Laborers (MST) while acknowledging that the prob- lem of landlessness desperately needed to be addressed. He broke with the party’s previously restrictive coalition policy and forged a crucial link to the rightist Liberal Party (PL), whose leader is a business entrepre- neur and whose ranks include voters from Brazil’s conservative-leaning evangelical Christian churches. The words “socialist” and “socialism” were absent from the PT’s official 2002 platform. In short, the Lula who ran in 2002 was not the Lula who had run in 1989, 1994, or 1998.
It was this moderation—combined with an electorate exasperated by the lost promise of Cardoso’s economic policies—that enabled Lula to shatter his customary 30 percent ceiling and take 46.4 percent in the first round, thereby setting up his landslide victory over Serra in the runoff.
The exigencies of electoral politics and economic globalization, coupled with the self-examination that PT leaders undertook after los- ing the 1998 presidential election, induced a move to the middle. At the time of this writing in late February 2003, the new government seems to be holding its course. The appointment of an economic team headed by figures such as Finance Minister Antônio Palocci and Central Bank presi- dent Henrique Meirelles, is perhaps the clearest evidence of this. Both intend to guarantee fiscal and monetary stability. Meirelles is a former Journal of Democracy 154 director of the Bank of Boston and ex-federal deputy elected on the center-left PSDB ticket. Anatomy of a Victory A key point in Lula’s favor and a big problem for Serra was simply that the latter—a man with more administrative experience and argu- ably more technical competence than Lula—was Cardoso’s handpicked successor. The outgoing president had become widely popular after tam- ing inflation with the 1994 Real Plan, but fell from grace in the wake of the 1999 currency devaluation and a recession that hurt real wages as well as employment. The public perception was that Cardoso preferred price stability and the approval of foreign lenders to growth and jobs for Brazilians. By 2002, sizeable shares of people polled before the runoff said that they were planning to vote for Lula as a protest against Cardoso. 2 Besides losing the presidency, the PSDB and its allies had to endure substantial losses in both houses of Congress as well. 3 Voters did not want to risk the economic stability that Cardoso’s policies had achieved, nor did they want to reject the market model altogether, yet they did want change.
A splintering of the political center and right contributed crucially to the PT’s success as well. In 1989, centrist and right-leaning forces had managed to close ranks before facing Lula in a runoff, but they could not repeat the feat in 2002. Moreover, no single candidate had suffi- cient personal appeal to prevail among the voters of the newly fragmented coalition.
Recognition of the continuing strength of conservative forces in the political system provides further perspective on the PT’s recent advances.
The Liberal Front Party (PFL) and the Party of the Brazilian Demo- cratic Movement (PMDB) continue to have substantial weight in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate. 4 Among their ranks (especially in the PFL) are scores of politicians known for their strongly conservative views and their control over patronage networks. For the most part, the political elite remains narrow in social terms as well. Embodying this image is former Brazilian president José Sarney (PMDB), the new presi- dent of the Senate. Cardoso resorted to using state resources to “buy” the legislative support of the political class on a number of key occa- sions. It is less certain that Lula will rely on such a strategy to get things done. As of this writing, he can count on 250 votes in the Chamber and 30 in the Senate, too little to guarantee the passage of ordinary legisla- tion, much less constitutional amendments, which require 257 and 308 votes, respectively. 5 Further weakening the PT’s grip on the political system is its thin representation among Brazil’s influential governors:
Only 3 states out of 27 have PT chief executives, while the opposition PSDB and PMDB have a total of 12 governorships. The opposition par- Wendy Hunter155 ties’ control over state governments will give these parties significant leverage when it comes to various federal reform efforts and policies.
Ironically, the party that in many ways would seem most ideologically open to Lula’s platform, Cardoso and Serra’s PSDB, is in the opposi- tion. While PSDB politicians claim they will not be as obstructionist as the PT was when it was in opposition, it is too early to tell whether they mean those words. Legislators from the PMDB could play a significant swing role as well. Lula will need to cultivate ideologically sympathetic members of the PSDB and PMDB in order both to broaden his coalition and to provide a counterweight to the most conservative elements within his own camp. For now it appears certain that Lula will have to work with narrower congressional support than Cardoso enjoyed throughout most of his term, with all that this implies regarding the maneuvering room available to the new president. The Question of Political Stability Could a PT-led government—especially if the economy deteriorates or the polity becomes polarized—present a threat to the stability of de- mocracy? Brazilian democracy has survived a number of serious crises since the 1985 return to civilian rule. These include President Collor’s 1992 impeachment on corruption charges and subsequent resignation; the failure of no fewer than seven economic-reform packages between 1985 and 1993; political turmoil during the interim presidency of Itamar Franco (1993–94) that threatened to result in a Fujimori-style self-coup; and the 1999 currency devaluation, which threatened the country’s hard- won economic stability and undermined the broad support that Cardoso had previously enjoyed. Over the same period, political changes occurred that might have presaged unrest. Civilians eventually challenged the armed forces over numerous political prerogatives that senior military officers had inherited from the authoritarian period and had used to exer- cise tutelage over the new democracy in its initial years. 6 The Collor government reduced the military’s once-dominant presence in the intel- ligence and national-security agencies. President Cardoso abolished separate ministries for the army, navy, and air force and transferred many of their functions to a civilian-run defense ministry. Taken together, the presidents since 1985 represent a movement from right to left across the ideological spectrum. Whereas Sarney and Collor had been loyalists un- der the military regime, Cardoso came home from exile to spearhead the institutionalized opposition as Senate leader of the MDB. As president, he moved to the center but retained some social democratic inclinations.
Lula, an “authentic” member of the working class and former leader of the “new unionism,” is identified with a party of a far more radical tradi- tion and vision than Cardoso’s MDB or more recent PSDB.
In the midst of these and related developments, Brazilian democracy Journal of Democracy 156 has proven remarkably resilient and sustainable. Even in the worst of times, capitalists have continued to invest in the Brazilian economy, social tensions have rarely resulted in debilitating mass protests, and the military has kept its saber-rattling within limits. Relative to the pre- vious democratic era, elite groups have been quiescent, never threatening to topple governments, much less the democratic regime itself. Brazil’s third-wave democracy is more stable than its second-wave democracy (1945–64), and has shown surprising increases in adaptability since its inception in 1985. 7 At first glance, this resiliency is surprising. Brazil is well known for social conditions—deep poverty, sharp inequalities, teeming urban slums, and weak social safety nets—that are not usually associated with democratic durability. The polity, moreover, features both strong presidentialism and a highly fragmented party system—a one-two punch that should, in theory, undermine coherent policy making and render conflicts tougher to solve. 8 Moreover, opinion polls suggest that citi- zens feel a less than wholehearted commitment to democracy. In the 2002 Latinobarómetro survey, only 37 percent of Brazilian respondents agreed with the statement, “Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government.” This is 20 percentage points below the average for Latin America—a region with a tenuous relationship to democratic govern- ment. 9 Moreover, it represents a steep decline from the 50 percent who expressed support for democracy in 1996 and 1997, and stands as one of the sharpest drops on this measure in Latin America. 10 What then accounts for Brazil’s impressive democratic stability since 1985? To begin with, the sheer complexity and heterogeneity of Brazil- ian society make it hard to organize for any massive change. Stark barriers divide the urban and rural poor, formal and informal workers.
The growth of different branches of industry and of the service sector has created further divisions, preventing even organized workers from advancing their demands in a united fashion. Ideological fragmentation and varying degrees of militancy further limit the labor movement’s potential to challenge and transform the status quo. Instead, as in the corporatist system that President Getúlio Vargas established in the 1930s (albeit to a lesser degree), workers advance their narrow interests, often to the detriment of the working class more collectively.
The persistence of conservative forces and the ongoing reliance on patronage networks, especially in poor rural and urban areas, act like an anchor, steadying democracy but also limiting it. Powerful elites in- cluding landowners, business interests, and politicians of the right continue to have substantial representation in Congress. 11 One estimate holds that landed elites controlled about 30 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies during the Cardoso administration.
12 Family-based oligarchies persist in states such as Maranh~ao, Rio Grande do Norte, and Santa Catarina. Central to the national-level influence of these oli- Wendy Hunter157 garchies and other conservative forces is the overrepresentation of rural areas in the heavily malapportioned Chamber of Deputies. The politics of clientelism—sometimes with a modern twist—is still alive and well in some parts of Brazil.
While Brazil’s political system safeguards elite interests, it also of- fers channels of influence to new forces that might otherwise take an “antisystem” stand. An electoral system based on open-list proportional representation with a relatively large number of members elected, on average, from each district keeps entry barriers low and gives space to new outside forces such as parties advocating popular interests and inclusionary practices. That a party like the PT was able to integrate activists and make steady electoral headway throughout the 1980s and 1990s no doubt helped to legitimate democracy in the eyes of core PT members. Innovation and success in government—most notably at the municipal level—helped the PT to widen its coalition, which in turn gave the moderate leadership within the party a boost and eased fears about the PT’s advance.
The marked prodemocratic shift in post–Cold War international norms has also shielded Brazilian democracy. The country’s commitment to a market-oriented transnational economic order raises the costs of a break- down in democratic rules and procedures. Should domestic factors be insufficient to secure democratic stability, external forces such as pres- sure from other democracies could serve as final safeguards. Indeed, they may already have done so: In late 1993, when democracy’s pros- pects were arguably at their lowest ebb of the entire post-1985 period, persons close to President Itamar Franco began sounding out elite sup- port for a Fujimori-style executive coup. They got few takers, in part perhaps because there were fresh memories of how U.S. condemnation had helped to scotch an attempted presidential putsch in Guatemala ear- lier that same year. Malign Rules and Practices While Brazil’s “third wave” democracy has proven remarkably adap- tive and stable, it has been less impressive in other ways, bearing out the observation that democratization is a complex process in which change unfolds unevenly. 13 Informal practices and patterns as well as formal rules diminish the quality of Brazilian democracy.
The persistence of extreme poverty bars legions of Brazil’s citizens from meaningful participation in the democratic system. Absolute lev- els of deprivation are stark, with about 50 out of 175 million deemed poor, an incidence that is above average for a middle-income country (estimated per-capita GDP in 2000 was US$7,400 in purchasing-power– parity terms). The population as a whole is poorly educated, especially in relation to Brazil’s overall level of development. In cities and the Journal of Democracy 158 countryside alike, poverty renders voters vulnerable to the machina- tions of patronage-wielding politicians who buy votes with handouts.
This perverts the participatory ideal of democracy. It also diminishes the potential for formal democratic par- ticipation to generate policies meant to advance human welfare in more system- atic ways. 14 While electoral rights were broadened in 1985 to include illiterates, this segment of the population (estimated at 15 percent by the World Bank) is among the most likely to be manipulated by politicians who rely on patronage net- works and are indifferent or even opposed to institutionalized policies aimed at poverty reduction.
Pronounced social inequality poses its own challenges to democratic ideals. Levels of income inequality in Brazil are among the highest in the world. Roughly 63 percent of total income goes to the wealthiest 20 percent of the population, while the poorest 20 percent gets a mere 2.5 percent. 15 Government policy on taxes and public benefits favors the most affluent as well. As a case in point, the World Bank estimates that “less than one percent of social security spending reaches the poorest ten percent of Brazilians, while about fifty percent is cornered by the wealthiest ten percent.” 16 This reflects a pension system that evolved by incorporating privileged categories of public servants and private-sec- tor employees over time, leaving most of those in the informal sector to fend for themselves. The most outrageous example of corporatist privi- lege is the system of lifetime pensions paid to unmarried adult daughters of deceased military officers, numbering presently some 58,000 women, many of whom have been all but legally married for decades. The Cardoso government gave new attention and resources to the social area, but did little to narrow stark differences in people’s civil status and public entitlements. Inequality on this scale effectively means that Bra- zilians enjoy widely varied rights as citizens.
Unequal treatment is sharply manifest in the legal sphere as well.
Poor people are frequent targets of arbitrary police violence and have little recourse when they are victimized. The law often goes unenforced against private thugs or paramilitaries when they assault rural unionists and their followers. Corruption is widespread among politicians and public officials. In a recent 91-country ranking of corruption (from best to worst), Transparency International placed Brazil 46 th, far below Chile, Costa Rica, and members of the OECD. 17 While public authorities launch many more investigations than they did before 1985, and guilty offi- cials sometimes lose their posts, the prospect of convicted offenders going to jail is almost nil. While the double standards of the legal sys- tem are not necessarily codified, a uniform system of rights and Pronounced social inequality poses its own challenges to democratic ideals. Wendy Hunter159 obligations among Brazilians does not exist in practice. As a conse- quence, the institutions of law and justice lack legitimacy and the realization of democratic citizenship remains limited. 18 Of the formal rules that dilute the quality of democracy, the most sa- lient concern the electoral system. As noted above, representation in the Chamber of Deputies is lopsidedly rural due to longstanding malapportionment. There is a huge gap between the share of legislative seats allocated to urban electoral districts and the share of the population that actually lives in them. It is generally accepted that in federal systems the upper house of the national legislature will represent geographic units of varying population more or less equally. Yet Brazil has lower-house malapportionment that exceeds the Latin American average and greatly exacerbates the skewing effects that already stem from the way the Sen- ate is apportioned. 19 The city of S~ao Paulo alone, for instance, is more than 50 seats short of its proportional share in the Chamber of Deputies.
Even those not committed to the one person, one vote ethic should recognize on practical grounds that such a situation can hamper governability. By creating a rural bias, malapportionment generally strengthens the patronage-wielders and weakens more progressive forces. 20 It invites chronic conflict between a conservative-leaning, malapportioned legislature and a president chosen by something that closely resembles a national plebiscite. Relatedly, as Richard Snyder and David Samuels point out, malapportionment can contribute to the “proliferation of subnational authoritarian enclaves.” 21 That Brazil’s Congress acts as a megaphone amplifying the voices of conservatives almost certainly contributes to stability, but it is just as clear that this exacts a price in terms of coherent governance.
Brazil’s unique system of open-list proportional representation and districts of high average magnitude is similarly double-edged. While the openness and flexibility of this electoral system facilitate the entry of small parties, thus giving voters more options and bolstering stabil- ity, weighing against these advantages is the negative effect on governability. Volumes have been dedicated to analyzing and dilating upon these consequences. 22 Suffice it to say here that current electoral arrangements have encouraged the proliferation of weak and undisci- plined patronage-oriented parties, reinforced personalistic leadership, and obstructed the legislative process. Brazil’s electoral rules also di- minish accountability, raising the chances of poor legislative performance and even corruption and other forms of malfeasance. Since one top vote-getter can lay claim to additional legislative seats for his or her party, even politicians who as individuals lack the confidence of voters may end up holding office.
The deepening of democracy in Brazil therefore demands reforms in various spheres. If the poor are to become full citizens and not merely the objects of demagogues and patronage handouts, the country will Journal of Democracy 160 have to find ways of raising levels of education and material wealth.
Socioeconomic inequality and distinctions in social privileges must narrow until there is a modicum of common ground among citizens.
The civil component of citizenship must also be extended. Brazilians need to be able to count on state institutions to secure their civil rights, either as protections or immunities. All individuals—regardless of so- cial status—must be equally subject to the rule of law. Finally, toward the greater goal of enhancing governability, political reforms must be undertaken to strengthen parties, enhance accountability, and correct for distortions in representation.
Addressing these and related issues will pose a series of formidable challenges for the new government. In light of the political system’s capacity to absorb change, there is little doubt that it would take a crisis of unprecedented proportions to derail Brazilian democracy altogether.
The big question is whether the multiple constraints at hand and Lula’s commitment to pursuing a pragmatic political course will ultimately allow his government to carry out even the most basic of reforms in these areas. Can Lula Come Through? What prospects exist for a PT-led government to deepen democracy along these lines? Alleviating extreme poverty and enhancing social equity are top priorities. The government sent a strong public message to this effect in showcasing its Zero Hunger program, a PT-designed policy innovation aimed at eradicating malnutrition among 23 million Brazilians. It has also pledged to reform social security in equity- and efficiency-enhancing ways—a goal that eluded even the politically skill- ful Cardoso—although doing so risks alienating core PT supporters who benefit from the current system, especially unionized public-sector workers, schoolteachers, and university professors. As has happened time and time again, however, measures to strengthen the rule of law and reform political institutions will likely be postponed for the sake of attending to urgent economic and social demands. The political capital it would require to take on these formidable problem areas, coupled with the lack of immediately obvious benefits to voters from even suc- cessful reform efforts, render them low priorities.
At center stage are the economy and the social sphere. Lula has prom- ised a new economic model that will raise exports, employment, wages, and government expenditures to alleviate poverty, improve social ser- vices, and enhance public security. He will need to walk a tightrope between making good on social commitments and respecting Brazil’s very tight economic constraints, which include debt repayment and bud- getary austerity. In advancing his progressive social agenda he will have to keep conservative antagonists at bay. In addressing the country’s se- Wendy Hunter161 vere economic problems, he will need to keep critics on the left in check, including trade unions, the landless movement, and perhaps most of all, the radical elements within his own party, who have already begun to demand greater decision-making influence over the government.
Expectations run high—especially in relation to employment, wages, and poverty alleviation—and failure to fulfill core promises could re- sult in bitter disappointment. Approximately 70 percent of respondents in one recent poll expressed confidence that the government would re- duce poverty and unemployment. Nearly three-quarters said that they thought Lula would make a good-to-excellent president. This compares with 66 percent for Cardoso at a similar point in his administration. 23 Such high hopes mean that Lula will have to produce results quickly in order to govern effectively. Present circumstances test Lula’s leader- ship talents like never before. So far, he has shown imagination and creativity in this regard. The flagship Zero Hunger program, for instance, is politically unassailable since it speaks to such a basic need and can be accomplished within reasonable financial limits. It has quickly be- come the darling of major institutions such as the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It aims to generate the kind of immediate concrete results that will be crucial to sustaining the popu- larity required to implement much-needed structural reforms in the economy. Will the extraordinary talent and fortitude that it took for Lula to rise from poverty to the presidency of a major country like Brazil help him defy the odds at a broader national level? Only time will tell, and yet one thing is already clear: The very fact that he is president speaks volumes about how far Brazilian democracy has come.
NOTES I would like to thank Kurt Weyland, Timothy Power, and Natasha Borges Sugiyama for their help with this article.
1. Reported in Anthony W. Pereira and Timothy J. Power, “Lula Lá: Implications of the 2002 Elections in Brazil,” Latin American Studies Association Forum 33 (Winter 2003): 8–10.
2. Reported in “Latin America Opinion Alert,” Office of Research, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., 8 November 2002.
3. The PSDB suffered a net loss of 23 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 3 seats in the Senate.
4. The PMDB holds 19 seats in the Senate and 74 in the Chamber of Deputies. The PFL has 19 seats in the Senate and 84 in the Chamber.
5. As of this writing in late February 2003, there appears to be a chance that the PMDB might join the government. This would bring the coalition’s numbers to 319 in the Chamber and 49 in the Senate.
6. See Wendy Hunter, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians against Sol- diers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Journal of Democracy 162 7. For a lengthy substantiation of these claims, see Kurt Weyland, “The Growing Sustainability of Brazil’s Low-Quality Democracy,” in Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring, eds., Advances and Setbacks in the Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
8. These features are emphasized in the chapter on Brazil in Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
9. See the article by Marta Lagos on pp. 163–73 in this issue.
10. Marta Lagos, “Between Stability and Crisis in Latin America,” Journal of De- mocracy 12 (January 2001): 138.
11. See Timothy J. Power, The Political Right in Postauthoritarian Brazil: Elites, Institutions, and Democratization (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
12. Kurt Weyland, “The Growing Sustainability of Brazil’s Low-Quality Democ- racy.” 13. Philippe Schmitter, “The Consolidation of Democracy and the Representation of Social Groups,” American Behavioral Scientist 35 (March–June 1992): 422–49. See also Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power, “Still Standing or Standing Still: The Brazil- ian Democratic Regime Since 1985,” in Kingstone and Power, eds., Democratic Brazil:
Actors, Institutions, and Processes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).
14. Kurt Weyland, Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pitts- burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).
15. The GINI coefficient hovered between .605 and .572 under Cardoso, with slight improvement over time. These numbers mean that Brazil has one of the most severely unequal patterns of income distribution on the planet.
16. World Bank, Brazil: Critical Issues in Social Security (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2001), 3.
17. See www.transparency.org/cpi/2001/cpi2001.html.
18. See James Holston and Teresa P.R. Caldeira, “Democracy, Law, and Violence:
Disjunctions of Brazilian Citizenship,” in Felipe Agüero and Jeffrey Stark, eds., Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Authoritarian Latin America (Miami: North-South Center Press, 1998).
19. See the table on malapportionment in Latin America, Richard Snyder and David Samuels, “Devaluing the Vote in Latin America,” Journal of Democracy 12 (January 2001): 148.
20. Scott Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratiza- tion: The Case of Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
21. Richard Snyder and David Samuels, “Devaluing the Vote in Latin America,” 147.
22. See in particular Barry Ames, The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil and Scott Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization.
23. Reported in “Latin America Opinion Alert,” Office of Research, U.S. Depart- ment of State, Washington, D.C., 8 November 2002.
