A fragmentação na Câmara dos Deputados (2002-2014): variáveis explicativas para a dispersão das forças partidárias nas bancadas estaduais

Abstract

Since the 2002 elections, an increasing parties fragmentation in the Chamber of Deputies is to be noticed. This increase in the dispersion of both electoral and parliamentary forces is even more significant that it occurs in every state tribune of the Chamber, despite the elections in each one of these states are independent one to another. This simultaneity suggests the presence of a common factor influencing all these district elections. Given the complexity of this purpose, the contributions to this work consist in an historical review of Brazilian scholars’ analyses addressing the fragmentation in the country – taking into account the republican period, between 1946-1964, and the post-democratization period; the main theoretical approaches developed by compared literature – in particular, the discussions relative to the influence of the electoral systems and electoral coordination; and by an empirical database, constituted using a longitudinal analysis of the electoral dispersion within the period 2002-2014. Finally, some of the factors highlighted by the literature – such as districts magnitude, centralization, nationalization and electoral coordination – are discussed in the light of data describing the Brazilian case during the current period. This way, we intend to find some explicative keys, which would constitute a starting point to a further investigation, exploring deeper the subject in question.