“Who is being served by the Grail?”: a study on the ideological classification of political parties through their bills in Alergs (2003 to 2006)

Abstract

Relying on a recent, highly fragmented party system, of fragile social rooting, organized as a federal system characterized by significant regional disparities, the Brazilian democracy is often questioned because of the ideological and programmatic inconsistency of its political parties. The difficulty of framing the Brazilian case in the analytical standards used for consolidated democracies contributes to overestimate its instability and advocate its infeasibility. This article aims to reformulate the importance of ideological dimension in the action of political parties in Brazil. The aim is to sort them ideologically through their parliamentary work. Free of the constraints generated at the electoral period, the political parties can reveal their most conservative, liberal or socialist facet. As a result, we’ve structured a methodology of analysis on the ideological position of parties through the bills submitted by its leadership to legislative assemblies, thus contributing to rethinking the old left-right dichotomy under the light of some new empirical evidence.