Popular incorporation and prospects for democracy

Conclusion

It has become commonplace to observe that Brazilian politics has undergone little change in recent years. Political society remains conservative, elitist, and dominated by amorphous and fluid political coalitions maneuvering for access to power. At first sight, it appears that dramatic transformations in the economic and social fabric of Brazilian society have had little or no effect on the way the political processes are conducted. One reason for this is the apparent willingness of the popular classes to participate in political arrangements that secure the hegemony of traditional elites. As I have shown, however, the various forms of collective organization that surfaced in protest of the military in the late 1970s are capable of breaking this spell. In providing vehicles of interest representation that militate against the logic of incorporative, patronage-based politics, these organizations make an important contribution toward the reconstitution of civil society along class lines. The accomplishment of this task is essential if the Left is to resolve the tension between ideological purity and electoral success.

This tension is not specific to the Brazilian case. The legacies of dependent capitalist development common to most of Latin America have created conditions upon which both clientelist and populist politics thrive. And if there was a sudden spate of authoritarian reactions to economic and political crises in the region in the 1960s and 1970s, this interlude has been followed, predictably, by the reemergence en masse of populist-based political movements. Many of these movements - Aprismo in Peru, Peronismo in Argentina, and Brizolismo in Brazil - are the direct descendants of their pre-authoritarian counterparts. They are all trapped because of the inconsistency of their political bases by the contradiction between distributive politics and economic solvency.

Most recent transitions from authoritarian rule were also, however, accompanied by the emergence and eventual demise of a popular movement. The thesis presented here suggests that if these movements played only a limited role in the actual process of transition, they may well determine the form that post-authoritarian politics takes in such countries.