The received wisdom in the study of Brazilian parties holds that Brazilian electoral law precludes programmatic parties. Yet we have little comprehensive data on party behavior in Brazil, and the electoral law thesis of party weakness has never been directly tested. I test the theory by examining party behavior in two periods of democratic rule (1945–64 and 1989–2002) in which electoral law is constant. I examine several features of governing and opposition coalition behavior, including inter-coalition divisiveness and intra-coalition unity in legislative voting, and party alliances in legislative elections and governing cabinets. All three indicators demonstrate more programmatic behavior in the current period, despite the constancy of electoral law. The results indicate that Brazilian parties are more coherent collective actors than previously recognized, and that scholars must augment institutional analysis with other variables in order to develop a general theory of party behavior.
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