Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans: Voting Behavior in Brazil

Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship has little impact on voter behavior in Brazil; what matters most is pork-barreling, incumbent performance, and candidates' charisma. This book shows that soon after redemocratization in the 1980s, over half of Brazilian voters expressed either a strong affinity or antipathy for or against a particular political party. In particular, that the contours of positive and negative partisanship in Brazil have mainly been shaped by how people feel about one party - the Workers' Party (PT). Voter behavior in Brazil has largely been structured around sentiment for or against this one party, and not any of Brazil's many others. The authors show how the PT managed to successfully cultivate widespread partisanship in a difficult environment, and also explain the emergence of anti-PT attitudes. They then reveal how positive and negative partisanship shape voters' attitudes about politics and policy, and how they shape their choices in the ballot booth.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Partisanship and antipartisanship in Brazil; 3. The strength of partisan attitudes in Brazil; 4. The rise (and decline) of Petismo; 5. Partisanship, antipartisanship, and voting behavior; 6. Partisanship and antipartisanship in comparative perspective; 7. Parties, voters and Brazilian democracy; References; Index.

About the Author :
David J. Samuels received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1998. His book Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach (with Ben Ansell, Cambridge, 2014), won the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation award as well as the William H. Riker best book prize from the APSA's Political Economy Section. He is also the author of Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers (with Matthew Shugart, Cambridge, 2010), and Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil (Cambridge, 2003). He has received funding from the NSF (in 1996 and 1999) and the McKnight Foundation (in 2001), and was awarded Fulbright Fellowships in 2004 and 2013. Cesar Zucco holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (2007) and since 2013 he has taught politics and public policy at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro. He has published articles on legislative politics, elections, social policy, and political economy, focusing both on Brazil and on Latin America. His work has appeared in leading journals in political science and Latin American studies.

Review :
'Samuels' and Zucco's meticulously researched book is a major contribution to the evolving concept of negative partisanship. It is also a marvelous dissection of the recent travails of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT). Few works on Brazilian politics have been so theoretically and comparatively informed, or have rivalled the rigorous methodological standards of this study.' Timothy J. Power, University of Oxford 'Theoretically informed and empirically rich, Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans analyzes the important impact of the PT, anti-PT divide in structuring political attitudes and voting behavior in Brazil for the past three decades. By differentiating negative partisanship from nonpartisanship, Samuels and Zucco advance our understanding of mass political behavior in the country. At this time of marked political turmoil, their analysis sheds light on the possible contours and patterns likely to emerge.' Wendy Hunter, University of Texas, Austin 'Samuels and Zucco make a forceful case that partisanship matters, even in the unlikeliest of contexts. They skillfully study how partisanship - both positive and negative - emerged in Brazil, and the political consequences it had. They have written not only the book on partisanship in Brazil, but also a must-read for anyone interested in public opinion, voting, or political parties more generally.' Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee 'Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans: Voting Behavior in Brazil is an excellent contribution by two major scholars. Samuels and Zucco offer a major and innovative theoretical contribution in rethinking how partisanship and anti-partisanship shape party politics in and beyond Brazil.' Scott Mainwaring, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'A major contribution to our understanding of anti-partisanship and a valuable corrective to much of the received wisdom that dominated our understanding of Brazilian politics in the 1990s and 2000s.' Taylor C. Boas, Boston University