Introduction

In this chapter I will propose a few lines of reflection on the current partisan political struggle in Brazil and how this can be read in the light of international experience of contention between liberals and social democrats.

Many wonder why the PT and the PSDB/ DEM coalition have been the most successful options in recent presidential elections in Brazil. Indeed, no matter how complex the political life in modern societies may seem, there is basically a single and fundamental cleavage which pits electorally viable political forces against each other in nations structured according to the dictates of the capitalist order: the political actors who organize around the social democratic movement and the actors that organize around the liberal movement. The replication of this ideological divide is expressed in the famous ideological left-right continuum along which parties, leaders, voters, interest groups and opinion leaders seek to position themselves or somehow are inevitably drawn into. The point here is not exactly to determine, for example, whether or not the Partido Social Democratica Brasileiro (PSDB) is a liberal or genuinely social democratic association, but rather to point out that starting in the 1990s with the introduction of market-oriented reforms in Brazil, the PSDB in association with the former Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL) renamed the Democrats (DEM), has become the most competitive and reliable option for voters with rightist or center-right inclinations.