Abstract
This chapter analyzes the expansion of political participation in Brazil between 1945 and 2010. During this time, the country lived under three different political regimes: two democratic (1945–1964, 1985–2010) and one authoritarian (1964–1985). The analysis focuses on electoral participation, showing how social inequality impacted voters’ ability to register, turn out, and ultimately cast a valid ballot. The chapter shows how extensive voting restrictions in 1945 were along these three dimensions and how they declined over time. It also calls attention to the impact of changes in the electoral legislation on different social groups’ ability to exercise their voting rights.
We thank Marta Arretche, Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, Daniel Hidalgo and the participants in the II Census Project Workshop (held in the Center for Metropolitan Studies, CEBRAP, March, 2013) for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Diogo Ferrari. José Antonio Cheibub acknowledges support from the Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Notes
- 1.
The number of registered voters in the last election covered by IDEA data in these countries was 716.9 million, 190.4 million, and 171.2 million, respectively. Available at: http://www.idea.int/resources/databases.cfm#vt. Last accessed: 02/27/2013. Regime classification is based on Cheibub et al. (2010).
- 2.
There have been no changes in the electoral calendar for legislative elections since 1945, when the first democratic elections were held in Brazil, despite periods of military rule. All census data used in this chapter begin in 1950.
- 3.
See Przeworski (2010, Chapter 3).
- 4.
Article 4 Code stipulates that only women in paid professions were required to vote.
- 5.
Note that fluidity involved in translating legal requirements into practice is common in any electoral system, even those based on ascriptive criteria (Horowitz 1985). In systems based on non-ascriptive criteria, however, this fluidity is even greater since it is subject to objective changes in their distribution among the population.
- 6.
The last national election had taken place in 1935, and presidential elections scheduled for January 1938 were suspended with the 1937 coup that established the Estado Novo regime.
- 7.
Carvalho (1958, p. 27) states that: “The questionnaires declare with no discrepancy that the incumbent party’s expenses were paid by the mayors’ office, if not by the State; but they did not obtain proof to support a peremptory statement.” Subsequently the author states: “The first sign that the administrative apparatus favors the incumbent party came with the appointment of low level officials to be in charge of voter registration and qualification” (Carvalho 1958, p. 52).
- 8.
According to Kinzo (1979, p. 81), ex officio registration “acted as a control mechanism over the urban electorate, tying it to the government since voters often felt obligated to vote with those responsible for their registration.”
- 9.
Campello de Souza (1976, p. 121) goes as far as to say that the manipulation of electoral rules gave the 1945 elections “if not an air of downright official fraud, then at least one of considerable bias in favor of the government.”
- 10.
See Bloem (1955) for more details concerning these proposals.
- 11.
The same law that extended the validity of old voter registration cards also determined that the official (Australian) ballot would be used in all majoritarian elections beginning in 1958.
- 12.
Electoral data for 1980 is actually an average of data from 1978 and 1982.
- 13.
In India, a country with high rates of illiteracy, universal suffrage has been constitutionally guaranteed since 1950.
- 14.
Between 1945 and 1964, the electoral calendar varied across states since it was the states that decided when their governors and mayors were to be elected. Voter turnout rates presented in Fig. 2 are computed only for the years when elections took place on the same date throughout the entire country.
- 15.
Melo Franco (1965, p. 454) discusses the options considered by UDN at that moment in time.
- 16.
For further details, see Costa (1964, p. 268).
- 17.
The law also stipulated that in the 1966 election only cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants would use the official ballot; all other cities would continue to use the old system, under which parties provided voters with the ballots.
- 18.
The actual passage reads: “registration, assistance to voters and their families, the prudent courage to face the authorities linked to the opposition, not to mention the expenses with transportation, food, clothing and sheltering of voters in the quarters” (Melo Franco 1965, p. 292).
- 19.
Interestingly, one of the first reform packages sent to Congress by President Castello Branco shortly after the 1964 military coup included the extension of voting rights to illiterates. He made no explicit effort to have this measure approved and Congress, ultimately, rejected it.
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Limongi, F., Cheibub, J.A., Figueiredo, A. (2019). Political Participation in Brazil. In: Arretche, M. (eds) Paths of Inequality in Brazil. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78184-6_1
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