Parties and constitutional change

The conviction that political parties play an important part in the performance of the democratic institutions established in the 1988 Constitution has taken root firmly in the political science produced in Brazil. Their role in coalitional presidentialism (Abranches, 1996) is seen as evidence that they have consolidated as pillars of the institutional structure of Brazilian democracy and as key actors in systemic processes of political interaction. In the literature on Brazilian political parties, the focus has shifted away from these institutions falling short of normative models (Fleischer,1981; Mainwaring, 2001; Mainwaring and Scully,1995; Mainwaring and Shugart, 2002; Mainwaring and Torcal, 2005) towards their actual role in the political system (Panebianco, 1988; Mair, 2003; Kinzo, 2005; Melo, 2010). Instead of revealing Brazil to be an ‘anomaly’ or symptomatic of the generalised ‘crisis’ in the party-form, the emphasis is on its shrinking horizontal representativeness and increasingly robust systemic functions. Today, parties are regarded as more important in the competitive dimension than in the participatory dimension of polyarchies. Rather than exceptional, Brazil is exemplary.

In exploring this territory, the intention of this chapter is to identify party-political contributions to the intense activity directed to amending the Constitution throughout the 1990s and with less momentum in the following decade. By early 2012, there had been 76 amendments – 70 isolated constitutional amendments (ECs) and six Constitutional Review Amendments (ECRs) enacted during the 1993–94 Constitutional Review. These numbers, confirm suggestions in the literature of: a certain instability in the Constitution, as in the expression ‘interminable constitution’ (Arantes and Couto, 2008); predominantly consensus-oriented negotiations during the Constituent Assembly (Souza, 2008); and scheduled postponement suited to government needs (Melo, 2002, 2005). The amendments established markers for the institutionalisation of public policies.

Parties’ role in coalitional presidentialism suggests that they are more important in the production of constitutional amendments involving the political system or ‘systemic’ areas managed by the executive. Of the 76 amendments, the 37 that fall into this category relate to changes to the political system and public administration (9), the economic order (9), tax and social security systems (11) and fiscal policy (8).