Do nacional ao local: a polarização entre PT e PSDB na perspectiva dos eleitores

Abstract

In the face of the presidential elections’ polarization, led by the Workers’ Party (PT, in Portuguese) and the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB, in Portuguese) since 1994, the purpose of this research is investigate if and how this cleavage reproduce itself in the cities, arranging the voters’ perceptions and identities. This topic refers to different Political Science’s fields, as the parties and the parties system and the political behavior. The literature, through authors like Michels (1982), Kirchheimer (1966) and Katz and Mair (1995), points the parties’ changes in the nowadays democracies. They emphasize the growing distance between the voters and the parties, beyond the ideology’s reduction in their speeches and actions. These changes are associated to the inherent features of the Brazilian party system that could contribute, to Lamounier (1992) and Kinzo (1993), to the intensive fragmentation, high volatility and strong regionalism in the competitions. Therefore, the disarticulation among the arenas would be one of the consequences of this conjuncture, confirming the concept of contextual political rationality, elaborated by Lima Junior (1983). All these factors would raise difficulties to bond the voters and the parties, according to Mair (1997), because it would depend on the stability between the parties’ actions and their rooting. However, Veiga (2007) and Ribeiro, Carreirão and Borba (2011) show that, despite the low preferences and identities among the voters in Brazil, the rates are not insignificant. The political socialization’s literature, on its turns, indicates determinant factors to this relationship, as the socioeconomics, emotional and rational elements. So, this study intends to understand how the voters organize their perceptions in front of a national bipartisan conjuncture, but with a local (mis)alignment and a growing distance between the voters and the parties. The hypothesis suggests the reproduction of the PT-PSDB’s polarization in the cities is not automatic and homogeneous, but it is mediated by the local arrangement components. Thus, a stronger competition among the voters is expected at the cities where the conjuncture follows the national pattern than at the cities where PT and PSDB are allies. A categorizing and quantitative research was developed to test this hypothesis. In this moment, the small and medium-size cities from Minas Gerais were classified according to the following variables for 2000-2012 period of time: PT and PSDB’ behaviour in the majoritarian elections, their electoral results, local party’s organization and affiliate’s number. This analysis allowed select an entire alliance between the parties and a case of high polarization, where three focal groups were realized with neuters, sympathizers and affiliate voters. The collected data enabled to elaborate two main considerations: (1) even if the PT-PSDB’s cleavage reproduces itself in the cities, it is mediated by local factors; (2) the local alliance between PT and PSDB does not assure the absence of other fragmentation and antagonism and it neither implies that the voters not be able to distinguish these parties. Therefore, this study suggests thinking this conjuncture by the idea of the contextualized polarization.