Neither formal nor informal: the diverse practices in Brazilian party organizations

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

Are the internal practices of Brazilian political parties formal or informal? Is their compliance to statutes, on the one hand, or personalism in party procedures, on the other, associated with the democratic standards of each party? We question the contemporary diagnoses regarding the prevalence of informality and personal relationships in Brazil's party organizations.

Materials and methods:

Based on a novel nationwide survey with leaders and former subnational leaders of 25 political parties, we assessed their level of compliance to rules, personalism, and intra-party democracy in a series of common procedures: selection of candidates, campaign financing, interventions in directories, choice of leaders, etc. We analyzed a total of 2,421 validated responses, encompassing 36 questions (out of a total of 52 in the questionnaire), between March and May 2020.

Results:

The descriptive analyses, as well as the z-score scales, revealed that the practices are not homogeneously formal or informal, varying significantly among each party's internal structures. Complementarily, the multivariate logit models revealed a correlation between the perception of formality (compliance to regulations and non-personalism) and intra-party democracy across various proceedings. Parties that adopt more stringent formal rules with effective enforcement mechanisms tend to opt for more inclusive internal practices, which disperse power among different layers of the party machine.

Discussion:

With forty years of democratic experience, we must go beyond assumptions formed from institutional predictions or case studies of Brazilian party organizations. The evidence indicates that not only are political parties different from each other, but these political associations cannot be reduced to personalism and informality. Our findings suggest that the institutional plurality of parties correlates with their level of internal democracy.

Keywords
political parties; party organizations; intra-party democracy; personalism; survey