Professional Politicians or Class Representatives? A Longitudinal Analysis of Legislative Representation in Brazilian Democracy

Abstract

What is the social profile of Brazilian federal deputies, and how has it changed over nearly three decades of democracy? This study examines whether different occupational groups are concentrated in left-, center-, or right-wing parties, and how these patterns evolved between 1998 and 2022. We analyze the occupational backgrounds of 3,591 deputies elected in seven consecutive national elections using data from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. To measure the association between profession and political ideology, deputies are classified by occupational background and by the ideological position of their parties. We adopt two analytical strategies: first, including all deputies to capture political professionalization and traditional social linkages; and second, excluding professional politicians to assess how social sectors maintain direct representation in Parliament. Associations are estimated separately for each election and trajectories are compared across ideological blocs. Brazilian politics displays persistent social divisions: businesspeople dominate the right, teachers and public servants concentrate on the left, and liberal professionals are distributed mainly across the center. Although the share of career politicians has increased across all blocs, these divisions remain. When professional politicians are excluded, the differences become even more pronounced. The associations are stable over time, though with variation: liberal professionals decline in all blocs, while businesspeople are the only group showing distinct temporal dynamics across the left, center, and right. The Chamber of Deputies thus operates as a hybrid system, combining professional politicians with direct representatives of different social sectors, helping to explain both party polarization and cross-ideological bargaining when specific economic interests are at stake.