A new ideological classification of the Brazilian political parties

Abstract

As long as democratic politics modify itself, perception on the belonging political parties’ also do. The paper’s main purpose is to bring in a new and updated ideological classification of Brazilian political parties. Data elicited from political scientists through a survey in 2018 asked them to position each party on the left-right continuum and, additionally, regarding their major objective, to pursue votes, government positions or policy issues. Our findings point out to a centrifugal trend on party system pushing most of parties to the right. Furthermore, we show a prevalence of patronage and clientelistic parties who rank in first the votes-positions dyad rather policy.