Conflito partidário e ordem política: PMDB, PSDB e PT na Nova República

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the Brazilian party conflict in the contemporary political regime, usually known as Nova República [New Republic]. We argue that the party dynamics in Brazil is characterized, on the one hand, by the interaction of parties originated within the political order of the country, and that we name as the establishment parties; and, on the other, by the process of insertion of parties that have an outsider origin. In order to proceed as such, we have chosen to analyze the trajectories of the three parties we have considered to have been central in the last decades: PMDB, PSDB and PT. Our analysis stems from a critique of the concept of party system and proposes an analysis of the political parties based on the different bonds they have established with the prevalent political and social order. We follow thereafter three basic steps. First, we discuss the origin and historical evolution of the republican political order in Brazil so as to better understand its crises. Afterwards, we interpret the political action of PMDB during the 1980s, when the party defended an agenda of moderate political transition, the transição moderada ; and that of PSDB, with its discourse based on the idea of stability, estabilidade , as two different attempts to solve historical dilemmas faced by the republican political order and, therefore, to consolidate the new regime. Finally, we analyze the insertion of PT in the political order and suggest that its outsider condition must be taken into consideration as a conditioning factor in the analysis of its trajectory and governing experience.